Don't forget that Germany also signed a non-aggression pact with Great Britain.
Do the victims of the Gulag?
I wonder if this is how Japan teaches WW2.
Don't forget that Germany also signed a non-aggression pact with Great Britain.
Bottomline is that every view of any historical event is always one viewpoint or another. The idea of an “objective view” of history is appealing, but I don’t think it’s possible.
As one example, when Europeans pushed west in North America and removed Indians, were we bringing civilization to a savage stone age people? Or were we stealing land from people who have lived here for centuries? Or were we behaving like every nation ever has and taking what we could manage to get away with? I see all of that boiling down to three separate viewpoints: 1) Indians were primitives and no one cares about them 2) White people are brutal colonizers who steal things 3) People always do bad things to other people.
Back to WWII — Hitler was bad, Stalin was bad, the Versailles Treaty was bad, a lot of stuff went wrong for a lot of people.
The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact proved that Poland had been recreated too small at Versailles. Putin’s claim that Western (Catholic) Ukraine is historically different from Eastern (Orthodox) Ukraine mirrors Lenin offering Western Ukraine and Belarus to Poland at the Treaty of Riga. Poland declined the offer as it was required to defer to Britain and France approving its final borders. The result was a Poland that was too small to resist foreign aggression without its allies, who proved unwilling to defend it. A larger reformed greater Polish Commonwealth might have kept the peace in Europe longer. Unreported in the West until after the fall of the Soviet Union, peasants in Ukraine had marched to the Polish border to demand that Poland save them from Stalin. Stalin saw a relatively prosperous Poland as a threat to the Soviet Union in much the same way Putin saw relative prosperity in Ukraine as a threat to Russia.
Ask Finland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia when the war started.
I am sure their textbooks are written by the same crew that writes Kim Un Jun’s biographies….you know, the one where he has not anus.
What a shock! Arrogant Russians are the stars of their own story.
Sometimes you just have to hit ROCK BOTTOM before things start looking up.
History is written by the victors. Including Stalin.
You realize there are gulags that have been preserved in Russia to remind the populace of the horrors that occurred under Stalin?
How does this differ from what every country, including the U.S. has done and continues to do? Germany after WWII is one of the few that openly beat home the bad things Germany had done, and that was probably caused by pressure from the west.
Just like American textbooks.
The bottom line is, each side thought they would be the one who benefitted from the Non-Aggression Pact, when the inevitable war came between them.
Hitler thought Britain and France would back down, and Stalin thought that the Western Powers would get bogged down in a war of attrition.
In the end neither got what they wanted from the Non-Aggression Pact, since France fell so quickly.
bkmk
Japan had influence in Korea in the late 1800’s, with them making Korea part of the Empire of Japan in 1910.
‘Putin has made contradictory statements about the pact. He struck a conciliatory tone in 2009 when he spoke in Gdansk in Poland, saying the Russian parliament had condemned the pact. Six years later, in a meeting with Germany’s Angela Merkel, Putin said the pact “made sense for ensuring the security of the Soviet Union.”’
I don’t really see the contradiction in that. Something could make sense at the time, get superceded by events, then draw a condemnation. So, the Russians teach WWII from the Russian/Soviet perspective. That is not exactly shocking.
Everyone sanitizes history
*see WT Sherman lol
Hitler and Stalin went straight to Hell after their death.
There, they meet God. God asks Hitler, “How many women did you have relations with?”
Hitler replies,”One only, mein Eva.” God gives him the keys to a brand new Mercedes for his loyalty.
God asks the same question to Stalin and is met with the answer of 7-8 women. God is not happy with this answer and gives Stalin an old, rusty Ford model T.
After some time, Stalin is taking a ride in his car. He hears Hitler laughing at him.
Frustrated with Hitler’s laughter, he pulls up next to him and says,
“Stop laughing at me.”
Hitler replies,” I wasn’t laughing at you. I just saw the pope go by on roller skates.”
