Posted on 08/25/2019 6:48:46 PM PDT by CondoleezzaProtege
As Europe marks 80 years of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, which carved up eastern Europe between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, Russia is trying to defend the agreement again. There is no political benefit to doing this. President Vladimir Putin needs to abandon his Stalinist inheritance of a foreign policy based solely on national interest.
If Moscow needed any reminder that many in eastern Europe still hold the treaty against it and still consider it a threat, plenty came on the anniversary. The governments of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Romania – the countries directly affected by the pact’s secret protocol – issued a joint statement saying the document “sparked World War II and doomed half of Europe to decades of misery.”
Russia is fighting back. In Moscow, the original of the treaty is now exhibited alongside documents relating to both the 1938 Munich Agreement, where British and French leaders sanctioned the Nazi annexation of the Sudetenland, and Poland’s subsequent invasion of part of Czechoslovakia.
At the opening of the exhibition earlier this week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov spoke of Britain and France’s treachery: By cozying up to Hitler, they forced the Soviet Union to sign a deal with the Nazis to ensure its own security, he said.
In 1989, the Soviet Union, too, officially condemned the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact — but subsequent Russian communications about it, including an entire article signed by Putin himself in the Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza, have come with the caveat that lots of others were at it, too.
These excuses are a major reason other European countries don’t trust Russia: To them, Putin and his subordinates are saying that Moscow would do something like this all over again if its interests dictated it, small countries be damned.
(Excerpt) Read more at themoscowtimes.com ...
‘At the opening of the exhibition earlier this week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov spoke of Britain and France’s treachery: By cozying up to Hitler, they forced the Soviet Union to sign a deal with the Nazis to ensure its own security, he said.”
Well, I can’t disagree much with that. All the countries of Europe (including those in Eastern Europe) were jockeying around for position in 1938-1939.
Stalin was always forced to act. He was such a kind and gentle person who would have never ordered the cold blooded murder of at 20,000 poles unless other people forced him to.
He was forced to fake evidence about their deaths at the Nuremberg trials. He was forced to lie about their fate to his allies during and after the war.
He had no choice.
Interesting. Trump/Putin the same as 1939. Trump is not naive but the Germans are.
Putin is Stalin....
The American left adores Stalin and they will never admit it or may not even know it. FDR gave Stalin the keys to post WWII world.
Actually, while the feeling may have been mutual, the national socialist in Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics did ink the deal to divide Eastern Europe.
Western governments really did not know the extent, but did suspect something bad, and were afraid. There were attempts to try and ascertain what was up.
At the same time, Germany was in part strategically posturing out of fear of the Soviet Union. Hence the effort to ink in a deal for taking the spoils Eastern Europe, even if it was not really the goal.
Stalin was an even more horrific and brutal monster than Lenin, since the death of Lenin in 24.
“FDR gave Stalin the keys to post WWII world.”
>
That was why FDR was the greatest President.
He didn’t let Russophobe Hitler & Hirohito get the keys.
the western governments had already betrayed and abandoned pathetic Eastern Europe. The Munich Agreement.
But hey, why should Stalin worry, when he could get double the returns from FDR than he would get from Adolf, in exchange for an inked in agreement to help us take down Russia’s long time impediment Japan, as long as we would move allied forces out of China. You know... to help provide an easier path for the Russians to help us out and all. And... so that Russia could finally have a path to spread communism into China.
What could possibly go wrong in the future with such a compromise. /S
With all the respect to these people who didn’t deserve to die their deaths were a rather minor thing in a grand scheme of things. And for Poland too because the Nazi killed millions there.
There was a plan of alliance after a Spanish civil war between USSR, France and UK to join forces in case of Nazi attack on any of the above.
Poland was a Nazi ally complicit in dismembering Czechoslovakia at the time and refused a transit rights to the Soviet army in case of such event.
Then France and UK decided Hitler would leave them alone and would be busy in East Europe establishing ‘Lebenstraum’.
At this point Stalin had two choices. To attack Germany all alone and to become a condemned aggressor or appeasement. It was too obvious to do the very same everyone else were doing.
The universal condemnation of Molotov-Ribbentropp Pact is a result of Limey and Frog butthurt. They didn’t deserve to get attacked for their appeasement!
Poland wasn’t that fluffy little kitten it tries to portray itself.
I have a deep respect towards Polish people but there are moments in the past they should be ashamed of.
Agreed!
Hence one of the reasons Trump got all up into Mercle’s grill about $150-$200 Billion in energy deals with Moscow, again, at the expense of Eastern European security in the face of Putin.
Slightly different circumstances today, although there were commodities in the calculus back then as well. Regardless, we have an oximoronic Moscow/Berlin axis of sorts, as well as great Eastern European concern right now.
And our posture has been trying to be a break or match for a very rapid Russian build up, in both EUCOM and CENTCOM AOR’s
What’s old is new. Strategically, it is about control of the flow of energy, as well as military superiority, in an attempt to gain a dominant influence over European and even Asian economic and foreign policy.
As well, the Eastern Med, and the shipping lanes are at stake right now as well.
Horseshit.
Yes not pretty but it did happen. Josef Beck a Polish secretary of state was in Germany in January 1938 to discuss annexation of Zaolzie as Germans were planning taking over Sudetenland.
On May 12, 1938 the Soviets promised the Czechs intervention in case of a German attack. France backed the Soviets.
Then Poland declared it would refuse Soviet military transit rights in case of both German invasion or Czechia or France.
These are facts regardless do people like it or not.
Czechs took advantage of the Poles saving Europe from Bolshevism in 1920 and took that area, even though it was mostly inhabited by Poles.
The Germans didn’t care what the Poles did, because they knew they’d have it all in due time anyway.
That’s true as well. The same partly applies to Molotov-Ribbentrop.
But to claim that Poland and Nazi Germany were ever allies is just plain ludicrous.
You might be technically right but the same once again applies to Molotov-Ribbentrop.
Although some might think the refusal of Soviet transit rights has certain features of siding with Germany against France, let alone Czechia.
“Controversial problems [between Germany and Russia] did not, in my opinion, exist anywhere along the line from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea and to the Far East. In addition, despite all the divergencies in their views of life, there was one thing common to the ideology of Germany, Italy and the Soviet Union: opposition to the capitalist democracies in the West.”—Julius Schnurre, Nazi trade rep to Russia.
Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by Shirer. Page 501 in my copy,
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