How a Potential Russia v. Ukraine War of 2022 Parallels the Germany v. Poland War of 1939

I don’t think this historical analogy (Poland ‘39) does anything other than serve Biden’s interest in ratcheting up pressure for military action. Putin has moved on several of his neighbors including the Ukraine in the past. I would look to those actions for patterns.

Some things never change. Putin is justifying the possible invasion of Ukraine to protect ethnic Russians.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry has marked the 82nd anniversary of the USSR’s invasion of Poland on 17 September 1939 by claiming that this was ‘a campaign of liberation’.

German and Soviet officers shaking hands following the invasion

It’s Official – White House Ukraine Crisis is Manufactured – Pelosi Says if Russia Doesn’t Invade Ukraine, It Proves Strength and Brilliance of Joe Biden Policy

February 13, 2022 | Sundance | 265 Comments

There it is. Whoopsie, Pelosi just gave the game away.

We have been looking for this exact political construct and today we got it. Nancy Pelosi appears on ABC This Week with George Stephanopoulos to discuss current events.

This was all planned in advance.

This is guaranteed to be a political pantomime.

The first topic is the “Russia-Ukraine crisis,” with Stephanopoulos asking Pelosi directly if she believes Russian President Vladimir Putin is about to invade Ukraine. Nancy Pelosi’s response [Transcript Here] tells us all we need to hear:

PELOSI: “Well, I think we have to be prepared for it. And that is what the president is — yes, I do believe that he is prepared for an invasion. I also understand why the President of Ukraine wants to keep people calm and that he wants his economy not to suffer. But, on the other hand, if we were not threatening the sanctions and the rest, it would guarantee that Putin would invade. Let’s hope that diplomacy works.
It’s about diplomacy deterrence. Diplomacy deterrence. And the president’s made it very clear. There’s a big price to pay for Russia to go there. So, if Russia doesn’t invade, it’s not that he never intended to. It’s just that the sanctions worked.” … “I’m very proud of the work that the president has done.” (read more)

Can you see the domestic political scenario that has been created out of thin air?

Democrats need a win on something; anything, to shift the narrative and change the reality of their failure into an illusion of success.

First, accuse Vladimir Putin of doing something he never intends to do, a fabricated scenario. Second, tell the world you will strongly respond to the fabricated scenario. Third, tell the world the exact date when the fabricated scenario is supposed to happen. Then, when the fabricated scenario never happens, it is because you are so brilliant and strong to have outmaneuvered and cowed the Russians.

Declare the absence of the Ukraine invasion event as the result of your brilliance and announce a foreign policy victory. That, my friends, is exactly what has taken place.

Yes, this is exactly how pathetic they are.

Defund the police movement is 'not the position of the Democratic Party': Pelosi | ABC News

The fact they made this “Ukraine crisis” out of thin air, is what reconciles this:

Heated Exchange Between State Dept. & Media on Evidence Russia Fabricating Attacks by Ukraine

Exactly as Predicted HERE

Bogus comparison. Our situation today is closer to 1914 than to 1939.

Just look at the numbers. 150,000 troops MIGHT be enough to invade maybe the eastern half of Ukraine, but what then?

An occupying force would need to be five times that size, at least 700,000 troops. Invading is easy, occupying is hard, as we learned in Iraq and A-stan. Remember "Mission Accomplished" after we captured Bagdhad?

Putin understands this. The population of Russia is 140M, Ukraine 43M. He doesn't have nearly the force structure to occupy Ukraine.

He's not going to invade. The hysteria is coming out of the desperate Biden admin, and the war lobby.

For crying out loud, our current Sec of Defense was on the board of directors of Raytheon until he got this gig. Plane loads of high tech missiles going to Ukraine are billions in profit for his pals.

Don't get played again..."Remember the Maine!" ... Gulf of Tonkin ... Iraq WMDs ....

Rank oversimplification.

* The RAF was not equal to the Luftwaffe in 1939. When the RAF tried daylight bombing after Hitler moved against France they got slaughtered.

* The time to have stopped Hitler was 1936.

* Britain and France went to war to protect Poland. What was Poland’s situation in 1946?

* Direct military action to stop a Russian invasion of Ukraine is logistically impossible.

* One thing we SHOULD do is use military force to evict allo Russian/Chinese from Venezuela and Cuba. THAT we can do.

I think you missed the point. Putin is justifying the possible invasion of Ukraine to protect ethnic Russians. THAT is far different that our disasters in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We (the US) were INVADERS into both countries and the vast majority of both populations saw the US as Infidels/Crusaders. COIN, Counter Insurgency Operations ONLY works in a country where the people actively back, support and want us there. Putin wants the area EAST of Kiev where the Ethnic Russians are.

However, I agree, a full occupation of Ukraine is almost impossible.

A certain unnameable overseas site is reporting that Russian forces now have a month of supplies including medical support for potential invasion casualties including field hospitals and plasma.

To make the situation more confusing, Sergey Lavrov is talking about troops returning to their barracks soon.

moving forward I will never take anything with the byline “Ned Barnet” as anything other than state propaganda

However, having done so, France and Great Britain then did exactly … nothing

They were casualty-averse. After the horrors of WW1: who can blame them?

Sitting back on their navies and denying Germany oil imports from the Americas turned out to be a war-winning strategy.

Even with France knocked out, all Britain had to do was a) survive and b) maintain the blockade.

Though he had Rumania under his belt, and the coal-to-oil plants, Hitler still only had about 1/4 or 1/3 of the oil he needed to run the 3rd Reich - and nothing like enough to carry out mechanised warfare for an indefinite period.

He HAD to invade Russia, and to try to take and keep and exploit the Caucausus oil fields (e.g. around Mariupol). His chance of sucessfully doing this was maybe 1%.

He took that chance and he failed. We fast forward to 1945, and the Wehrmacht are mostly using horses. That's the whole narrative of the war right there.

Here is an excellent overview of the critical Oil narrative to WW2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVo5I0xNRhg&ab_channel=TIKhistory

* Britain and France went to war to protect Poland. What was Poland’s situation in 1946?

Under Soviet occupation.

Poland was twice invaded in September 1939. First by the Germans, then by the Soviets.

Oops, meant Maikop, not Mariupol.

INVADING a country is easy.

OCCUPYING a country is much harder, and in the face of opposition, will require a much, much larger force.

Remember “Mission Accomplished!” after we captured Baghdad? That was just the beginning of the pain of occupation.

American population: 335M
Iraq population: 40M
Russian population: 140M
Ukraine population: 43M

150,000 Russian troops are enough to invade, but NOT enough to occupy. They would need to send the entire Russian military under arms into Ukraine to occupy it, or ramp up conscription to full world war levels. This is NOT going to happen.

While what you say is correct, you are speaking of the cost of occupying all of a hostile territory.

What if the Putin objective is limited to the Russian speaking area of Ukraine that may in fact not be hostile to reverting to being Russian?

I don’t know and have no facts but suspect that to be the objective

His action must result in improving the health of Mother Russia. That is Putin’s primary task. Saving Mother Russia

150,000 Russian troops are enough to invade, but NOT enough to occupy
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They don’t have to occupy the entire country. Just up to the Dnieper River. (And lets not forget all the Separatists who would be added to that number.) This achieved, it would keep the Volgograd Gap no longer vulnerable and the the Crimean peninsula and Black Sea safely under Russian defensible control. About half the distance to the Carpathians Mountains would be closed also. So we can forget that meme.

Once Russian artillery lets lose, civilians will flee or be evacuated, leaving vast swaths of depopulated territory, further lessening the need for occupying troops.

How Russian Artillery Destroyed Eastern Ukraine
https://glasnostgone.org/2019/01/30/my-video-russian-artillery-in-ukraine-did-this/

I believe this analysis is simplistic in some respects which vitiates the power of the author's analogy applying 1939 to Ukraine.

First, although the winter of 1941- 42 played a part in defeating the German army around the outskirts of Moscow, the primary reason was the cross continent migration of Russian Siberian soldiers to outflank and overwhelm the German position with numbers. Contrary to the author's account, these soldiers were relatively well equipped and in sufficient numbers.

Second, with respect to the invasion of Poland, but more with respect to the invasion by Germany of France, one has to consider the attitude of the French toward sacrificing another generation to defeat a German army on the right when much of France was more frightened of forces on the left, a fear they had understandably gained from viewing the excesses of the communists in neighboring Spain during that Civil War and assessing the power of the communist left in metropolitan France.

Third, the British, although motivated as the author suggests by the immorality of fascist Germany, were perhaps even more motivated to act as the British had done for centuries, to maintain a balance of power in Europe. In other words, the British could as equally have gone to war against the Soviet Union for its invasion of Poland but acted only against Germany. It was a question of balancing the threat as much as a moral crusade.

Another lesson, perhaps more relevant is that the appeasement that has gotten such a bad reputation since Munich is not to lend credibility to a domino theory nor is it to reinforce the idea of going to war as a moral crusade. Rather, the history of the 1930s appeasement tells us that timing is what can be wrong with appeasement. Hitler was very vulnerable up until the time he invaded Poland but not thereafter. He could've been easily stopped at any time at the Rhineland, in Austria, Czechoslovakia etc. but by Poland he was formidable especially when weighed against the ambivalence of the French and the appeasement sentiment in Britain.

The issue is not a domino theory, not a visceral reaction against appeasement, not to wage war only in summer, but to rationally calculate your nation's interests.

Not going to happen. You believe that in 2022 Russia is going to use massed artillery to depopulate and area the size of Minnesota or Oregon containing tens of millions of civilians? I think you are ridiculous. Half or even 1/3 of Ukraine is NOT an analog to the narrow Donbass strip on the Russian flank.

So the this is your "solution" to Russia's problem of occupying half of Ukraine, just "depopulate" it? What are you smoking?

So Russia takes half of Ukraine, (in your fever dream) becomes Global Public Enemy #1, sending millions of refugees fleeing West, and the West floods Free Ukraine with modern weapons, keeping the war going. Meanwhile tends of thousands of Polish and other volunteers head to Ukraine, and....we are starting WW3.

As I said above, the situation is much closer to 1914 than to 1939.

If Putin was going to invade according to your plan, it might look like this. But he won't. He's smart enough to know it would trigger WW3, and it would very likely go nuclear very fast. He said so last week.

What are you smoking? (in your fever dream)

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The good stuff. You forgot the forces coming down from the north in Belarus in your graphic. Nice graphic by the way.

It was not a fevered dream, just the un-fevered sort.

“West floods Free Ukraine with modern weapons” and “Meanwhile tends of thousands of Polish and other volunteers head to Ukraine” - now that’s a dream, if I ever saw one - Brandon being decisive? Now who’s smoking what?

Yes its all just an exercise in war planing, not reality - Putin would face too much hardliner opposition at home, among other reasons the invasion won’t happen.

Maybe - at most - some reinforcements to the Donets’k Oblast Separatists. Maybe.

Besides, Sergey Lavrov has said the troops will soon return to their barracks.

Good post - but please note that the Nazis were left-wing. They were emphatically totalitarian socialists.

They were just *differently* marxist than the Communists, a) because Hitler allowed citizens to continue to own property, and b) because National Socialism splits communities into different hated outgroups than International Socialism.

Your point about the French being riven by a fear of both marxists and fascists is a good one. I would say that the French were (correctly) worried about both rival gangs, but that these gangs shared similar, state-worshipping, outgroup-crushing totalitarian ideologies.

TIK, who I admit is getting a workout on this thread, has posted an excellent, and *much hated* video on Hitler's socialism.