[Cronos]

For Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians it had one "redeeming" factor which was that it protected them from the Soviets

now we KNOW the horrors that the Nazis did -- that's common knowledge in the west. Imagine how horrific the Soviets were if they were considered worse than the Nazis

[DesertRhino]

“Imagine how horrific the Soviets were if they were considered worse than the Nazis”

Nazis weren’t considered better, GERMANS were. People under the Soviet boot thought they were joining the Germans they all knew of recently from WWI. They knew how “Germans” acted. The German Army of WWI was the antithesis of the Nazi armies.
They didn’t yet knew about what the face of the Nazi really was.
And imagine how horrific the Nazis were that they were cool with being seen as liberators, and were still happy to heap even more abuse on those they “liberated”. Nazis were truly sick. They weren’t about wiping out communism, they were only about spreading their own sick brand of socialism, nothing more.

[PapaBear3625]

now we KNOW the horrors that the Nazis did -- that's common knowledge in the west. Imagine how horrific the Soviets were if they were considered worse than the Nazis

Consider the Ukrainians. Stalin killed over 7 million of them between 1932-33 in the terror famine, where the communists went up and down the country confiscating all the food. Stalin killed more Ukrainians in 2 years than Hitler did Jews.