The 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact & Imperialist Propaganda
By Nikos Mottas at In Defense of Communism*
The Soviet army hoisting its flag over the German Reichstag after the battle for Berlin in 1945
If we see that Germany is winning we ought to help Russia and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible…”
Harry S. Truman, 33rd POTUS, 1941
Since the end of the Second World War, the bourgeois historiography has tried to distort various incidents in order to vilify Socialism and the USSR. One of these incidents- which has been a “banner” of imperialism’s apologists and other anticommunists- is the so-called “Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact“* which was signed in 1939. In it’s unscientific, unhistorical effort to equate Communism with Nazism, the bourgeois propaganda presents the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact as a medium of expansive policy by the USSR and Hitler’s Germany. The distortion of historical events, the amalgamation of lies and the half-truths by the Imperialists and their collaborators aim in defaming the huge role of the Soviet Union in the anti-fascist struggle of WW2.
However, the reality is different than the one presented by the bourgeois historiography. Here, we will examine the circumstances and the events which led to the Molotov-Ribbentrop non-agression pact, in an effort to debunk the anti-communist propaganda on this matter.
Having the financial and technical support of US and European monopolies, Hitler’s Germany began to strengthen its armed forces in the mid-1930s. In 1936, the Nazis proceeded to the militarization of Rhineland, helped Mussolini in capturing Abyssinia (Ethiopia) while they played a crucial role in the imposition of Franco’s fascist dictatorship in Spain. The strengthening of Nazi Germany and the beginning of fascism’s expansion in Europe took place under the tolerance of the then powerful “democratic” imperialist powers; Britain, France and the US.
After the annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in March 1938, the Allies (Britain, France) proceed to the Munich Agreement (30 September 1938). The apologists of Imperialism usually try to downgrade the importance of this agreement between Britain, France, Mussolini’s Italy and Hitler’s Germany. However, the impact of the Munich agreement- an act of appeasement towards the Nazis- was definitely significant. With the signatures of the then British and French Prime Ministers, Neville Chamberlain and Édouard Daladier, the Nazis annexed Czechoslovakia and intensified their expansionist aggressiveness towards Eastern Europe.
The participants of Munich Conference, 1938. From left to right:
Neville Chamberlain, Eduard Daladier, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini.
A few months later, on April 7, 1939 the fascist regime of Italy invaded and captured Albania. On March 31, 1939, the governments of Britain and France guaranteed the protection of Poland in case of a Nazi attack- Both London and Paris signed bilateral agreements of mutual aid with Poland. When Germany invaded Poland on September 1st, 1939, Britain and France declared war against Hitler but without taking any military action until next year! From their side, the United States declared their neutrality.
Before the invasion of the Nazi army in Poland, the government in Warsaw had tried to negotiate with Hitler a possible joint attack against the Soviet Union. The negotiations failed, as long as the Polish bourgeoisie prefered instead to sign defense agreements with Britain and France. What is important here is that Poland had rejected an agreement of mutual defense (against Nazis) offered by the Soviet Union.
The Imperialist propaganda tries to obfuscate Britain and France’s stance of appeasament towards the Nazis and hides the reasons behind the US “neutrality”. The words of US Senator Robert A. Taft are characteristic: “A victory of communism would be much more dangerous for the United States than a victory for fascism” (CBS, 25 June 1941). According to historian John Snell, the western powers regarded the Third Reich as a “barrier” against the Soviet Union in central Europe. The strategic aim of the “democratic” imperialist states was to turn Hitler against the Soviet Union; in a few words, to use the Nazis as a weapon against the contruction of Socialism in the USSR. That was the initial aim of the so-called “allies”.
On that point, we must remind that, before the war and while Hitler’s regime was building a powerful military, the Soviet Union took numerous initiatives in order to deal a defensive agreement with the European capitalist states. Despite the Soviet calls for the preparation of a common front against the Nazis, the western European “allies” declined such a perspective. For example, before the 1938 Munich Agreement, when Hitler annexed Austria, the Soviet Union proposed an International conference (March 1938) which would deal with the confrontation of Nazi agressiveness.
On July 23, 1939, the Soviet Union proposed to Britain and French the beginning of negotiations for the formation of a defense plan in case of a German attack. However, the British government had other priorities: to secretly negotiate a non-agression pact with Hitler’s representatives in London. Indeed, while the Soviet Union was proposing to the capitalist states an anti-fascist front, the British government was secretly negotiating with the Nazis the “spheres of influence” in Europe!
What the bourgeois historiography deliberately hides is the fact that the Soviet Union was the only state that had not an aggressive, expansionist policy. Both the two sides of international imperialism (the “democratic” capitalist allies and, on the other hand, the Nazi-fascist Axis) were aiming at the elimination of the Soviet Union. The real enemy of both sides was the Socialist construction in the USSR and for that they didn’t hesitate to use each other against Moscow.
The temporary non-agression pact between the Soviet Union and Germany came after numerous efforts by the Soviets to deal a defense agreement with Britain and France. Therefore, being under the continuous threat of the expanding Nazi army and in order to prepare itself for an extensive war, the Soviet state forced to sign the non-agression pact with Berlin. What the bourgeois historians and the apologists of Imperialism call an “alliance between Hitler and Stalin” was in fact a needed diplomatic manoeuvre by the Soviet Union in order to gain time and prepare effectively for a full-scale war. Even bourgeois historians admit that the Soviet policy was complete realistic, given the then circumstances and the danger of a German attack (F.Dulles, The road to Tehran, New York, 1944, p.203-207).
According to the imperialist propaganda, the Molotov-Ribbentrop non-agression pact led to the Soviet “capture” of a part of Poland and the Baltic states of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia. Such arguments- about the supposed “Soviet occupation”- have fostered the rise of fascist, neo-Nazi groups in these countries after the counter-revolution in the USSR. However, the truth is also quite different. Poland had participated actively in the allied imperialist attack which was launched against the newly-founded Soviet state in 1918. With the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (3 March 1918) the Bolshevik leadership had renounced Tsarist claims to Poland. The Polish government kept under it’s control a number of areas in the Baltic region, including western Belarus, western Ukraine and a part of Lithuania). After the Nazi invasion in Poland in 1939, the Red Army moved towards the Soviet-Polish borders and liberated the abovementioned areas.
The bourgeois-imperialist propaganda tries to distort history when it refers to “Soviet occupation”- on the contrary, the Soviet Army was the one which liberated the Baltic countries and eastern Europe from the Nazis. The Motolov-Ribbentrop pact did not include any kind of Poland’s “partition”. On the contrary, the 1938 Munich Agreement between Britain, France and the Axis (Germany, Italy) led to the partition of Czechoslovakia and the seizure of the country by Hitler’s army.
Conclusion
The imperialist propaganda regarding the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact consists one of the numerous cases of blatant anticommunist lies. Through bourgeois historiography, Imperialism tries to equate communism and fascism, to vilify Socialism and the Soviet Union. In order to do this, Imperialism’s apologists distort history and invent the most hideous slanders against the Soviet Union and the socialist states; from the “Moscow trials” and the “gulags” to the supposed “Stalin-Hitler alliance” and the “Soviet invasion” in Afghanistan. What the Imperialists want to hide is the fact that fascism is just another kind of bourgeois authority- the simple fact that, as Bertolt Brecht said, fascism is the “most naked, brazen, oppresive and deceitful form of capitalism”.
* The Soviet-German non-Agression Pact took it’s name from the surnames of the two Ministers of Foreign Affairs who signed it: Soviet diplomat Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov (1891-1986) and Nazi Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893-1946).
Nikos Mottas is the Editor-in-Chief of ‘In Defense of Communism’, a PhD candidate in Political Science, International Relations and Political History.
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Great read! However, I wish you had included the whole quote at the beginning: “If we see that Germany is winning we ought to help Russia and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible, although I don’t want to see Hitler victorious under any circumstances.”
Lenin said something similar when Russia pulled out of WWI: “”we rid ourselves…of both imperialistic groups fighting each other. We can take advantage of their strife…and use that period when our hands are free to develop and strengthen the Socialist Revolution.”
Reblogged this on Proletarian Center for Research, Education and Culture and commented:
A great history lesson. I also found it interesting that the “democratic” imperialist powers (US, UK, France) used the fascist powers as a weapon against the USSR and the world socialist movement in general just as they are today using ISIS for their nefarious domestic and foreign policy objectives.
The problem with the non-aggression pact is that Stalin could not conceive of Hitler using it as a way of softening the USSR up for an eventual attack. This is from a new book on Stalin by Tony McKenna titled “The Dictator, The Revolution, The Machine”:
For all of this, Stalin’s appeasement of the Nazis was not simply a desperate ruse to give Soviet Russia a little breathing space in which to better arm itself against the German imperial menace – as his de- fenders nearly always try to argue. In fact, everything suggests that Stalin didn’t believe there was any danger of Hitler mounting an attack in the near future once the pact had been signed – despite all the avail- able and steadily mounting information to the contrary. Stalin’s myopia on the crucial question of evidence cannot be overstated. Medvedev argues that the “intensive transfer of German troops and
equipment to the Soviet border began in 1940. Early in 1941 it was sharply increased, becoming an interrupted flood in March and April.”185 He also points out how “the command of the Soviet border troops sent regular reports on the situation at the border to the party’s Central Committee , to the Sovnarkom, and to the foreign affairs and defense commissariats”.186 As well, between October 1939 and De- cember 1940, over five thousand German secret agents had either been captured or killed within Soviet borders.187 Deutscher, who is far more sympathetic to Stalinism than ever he should be, takes up the same theme in earnest, pointing out how, at the end of April 1941, “Stalin received the British message, which Churchill was to mention in his speech of 22 June, warning him of the imminence of the German attack”.188 Similar warnings from Roosevelt, Sorge and even the German ambassador Schulenberg all fell on deaf ears. In the very week before the German offensive was launched against Russia, Deutscher goes on to note, Stalin issued a “bizarre statement”, a “comic-tragic effort” which “praised before the whole world those who next week were to unmask themselves as Russia’s mortal enemies and taunted those who next week would be her only allies”.189 Stalin had authorized a statement through his news agency that “credited Germany with ‘fulfilling to the letter’ her agreements with Russia”190 while at the same time deriding the British Ambassador for irresponsibly cooking up false rumours of an impending Russo-German war.
If you are going to quote Medvedev, why not also regale us with some Conquest and Solzhenitsyn?
It’s not as if these fantasists and slanderers were ever completely discredited by the facts as revealed in the archives of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and opened up to historical research in 1990 by Gorbachev — that is to say, the facts as collated from therein by the likes of the Russian historians V.N. Zemskov, A.N. Dougin and O.V. Xlevnjuk, and in collaboration with western country researchers like Nicholas Werth, J. Arch Getty, and G.T. Rettersporn, the lot of them, to a man, unabashedly anti-socialist in outlook.
Mario Sousa, a self-confessed Stalinist “stooge,” also tells a very revealing tale, one that to my mind neatly corroborates the gist of Nikos Mottas’s essay, namely, that “[i]mperialism’s apologists distort history and invent the most hideous slanders against the Soviet Union and the socialist states; from the “Moscow trials” and the “gulags” to the supposed “Stalin-Hitler alliance” and the “Soviet invasion” in Afghanistan.” It’s just a click away:
http://www.northstarcompass.org/nsc9912/lies.htm
I don’t expect you to read it, Proyect, but others might find it as enlightening as Mottas’s piece.
I’ve just read Mario Sousa’s piece and learnt quite a lot from it. I thoroughly recommend others to do the same. Thank you for the link Norman.
I have previously read the article by Nikos Mottas, and found it highly informative.
While it perhaps provides some balance to the stories circulated in the western media about Stalin’s “purges”, it does not really deal with the subject of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact – the subject of this article.
One assertion being made by revisionist historians is that Hitler was forced to order the attack against the Soviet Union because he had received intelligence that Soviet forces were massing on the border in preparation for launching an attack against Germany. Is there any evidence to support this?
I have also read in the past that Stalin refused to believe the Soviet Union was coming under attack despite warnings from Churchill and others, and it was this unwillingness to accept warnings that led to the initial catastrophic defeats experienced by the Soviet Army.
It seems to me that there may have been two reasons for Stalin’s unwillingness to accept these warnings.
Firstly, this was an era of dictators, in which a sort of fellowship among dictators gradually emerged.
It may be that Stalin could simply not grasp that Hitler – a fellow dictator – would act in the way he did.
The second reason was based on Stalin’s ideological thinking, i.e. that Nazism was but the last stage in the historical development of capitalism and that it was only a matter of time before both nazism and capitalism collapsed due to internal contradictions. On this basis, Nazi Germany should have lacked the strength to launch the kind of ferocious attack against the Soviet Union that it did. Stalin clearly got this wrong which is why he had to hand over control of the actual fighting to his generals – a wise move which Hitler failed to learn from.
There is another unspoken dimension to this subject, which was the support of the Soviets for the German Wehrmacht and other German forces between the wars, designed to assist Nazi Germany in evading the post-Versailles restrictions on Germany.
It was inside Soviet territory that the world’s first deployment of German paratroopers was developed.
German tanks refined their “blitzkreig” tactics inside Soviet territory too during the 1920s and 1930s.
Stalin miscalculated badly in allowing Germany to evade the terms of the Versailles Peace Treaty.
These latter day attempts at re-writing history impress no one and suggest some prefer to live in the past.
Stalin believed that Nazism and Fascism were the last dying throes of capitalism, which would collapse.
He miscalculated badly, which is why he retreated into depression for three days after the Soviet Union came under attack from German forces. He expected to be deposed, possibly even to be shot.
By handing over military strategy to his leading military officers, he began what became a victorious war.
It is pointless re-hashing old bits of history. Let’s focus on the present-day world, not yesterday’s world.
Not defending the atrocious behavior of the imperialist nations, but this author is delusional about the realities of communism in the USSR. Can he explain the Katyn massacre away in the same fallacious manor?
manner
No mention of the German-Polish Non-Aggression Pact</ a> 1934-1939, I see.
Not a lot of people talk about or even know about it in the West.
That’s Polish Marshal Pilsudski in the uniform welcoming Goebbels the German foreign minister in Warsaw 1934.
Pilsudski, the Polish head of state, is the one who had dreams of recreating the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, an Intermarium ostensibly to act as a bulwark against Germany to the west and the USSR to the east, and in 1919 duly invaded former Russian Imperial territory, Soviet Ukraine and Soviet Russia, in an undeclared war of aggression whilst the nascent USSR was in the throes of civil war.
Should have been above “welcoming Goebbels and the German foreign minister”.
I too am unpersuaded by this article.
Agreement for the Soviet Union to invade Poland was in a secret clause of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.
After the Nazi forces invaded Poland, no one forced the Soviet Red Army to also invade Poland.
It was a conscious choice and a conscious decision to invade and carve-up Poland with the Nazis.
Arguably, if the Soviets had not intervened, Poland might well have withstood the Nazi onslaught.
In which case, the whole of European history could have turned out very differently.
Whatever rationale is applied, it was a mistake on the part of the Soviets to agree to the Pact.
This should simply be admitted and everyone should focus, instead, on present-day realities.
The Red Army annexed Polish territory that the Poles had annexed from Russia some 20 years earlier as a result of the Polish-Soviet War, 1919-1921.
The Red Army entered former Polish territory in the east on 17 November, 1939, 16 days after the Nazi invasion of that country from the west and at a time when Poland had essentially been defeated by the Germans and no Polish government or state existed.
The invasion of Poland ended on October 6th, although Poland had not officially surrendered, albeit that there was no Polish government to negotiate any terms, not that, I think, there would have been any terms offered.
As Molotov pointed out on September 17, 1939, to the Polish Ambassador in Moscow:
“Warsaw, as the capital of Poland, no longer exists. The Polish Government has disintegrated, and no longer shows any sign of life. This means that the Polish State and its Government have, in point of fact, ceased to exist.”
So – seemingly – “might is right” when it comes to the former Soviet Union, eh?
Just as it seems it was when the Poles seized Vilnius in 1919 as well as large areas of White Russia and the Ukraine in the same year..
So – seemingly – “two wrongs do make a right” ?
No.
Who said they did?
Oh yes, and the Poles seized a piece of Czechoslovakia after the Munich sell-out to Hitler, as did the Hungarians.
Why does nobody criticize this?
And the British made a naval agreement with Nazi Germany in 1935, much to the annoyance of the French, who knew nothing of the deal until the deed was done.
But only the evil Russians made deals and treaties and pacts with the Nazis according to most in the West.
What you highlight is that under the then prevailing power-politics being applied at the time, all of the leaders of the European nation-states (including the former Soviet Union) were all as bad as one another.
I have no illusions about the questionable conduct of Britain, France and Poland in their dealings with Nazi Germany. Neither do I have any illusions about the conduct of Stalin and the Soviet Union.
Neither do I have illusions about Nazi Germany. Albert Speer recounted a story about a ceremony being organised by the Nazi hierarchy to celebrate the birthday of Ribbentrop, the Nazi Foreign Minister.
They presented him with an ornate chest in which to keep all the outstanding treaties he had signed.
It became a source of merriment for them all when they realised they had broken every one of them.
“So – seemingly – “might is right” when it comes to the former Soviet Union, eh?”
Why?
Who said it was?
Did I?
Unpublished—Synthesis of
Conjuring Hitler. How Britain and America Made the Third Reich
(Pluto Press, May 2005).
http://guidopreparata.net/chpg/Incubation-Russia.pdf
Yes, some history rather than decontextualised demonisation helps to understand historical events much better. Mark Twain nailed it when he contrasted the ‘horror’ of French aristos being carted of in the tumbrils to the much greater horror of the generation of exploited and starved French peasants.
Similarly the ‘innocence’ of Poland withers a bit when it is recalled that they were among the first to sign a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany (for all that it did them) and they participated in the 1938 carve-up of Czechoslovakia. Their later agreement with Britain and France called for a western front to be opened within 14 days. As the article points out that didn’t happen. What it neglected to add was that the Polish government fled Warsaw without defending it and the Soviets made their move (17 September) when it was clear that the allies were doing nothing.
BTW Poland’s military dictator Pilsudski came to power in 1926, after Mussolini but well before the Nazis, and had he not died in 1935 who knows what might have happened in 1939. As it was he was succeeded by the incompetent ‘Colonels’ who clearly botched Poland’s defence.
So, ‘an agreement to carve up Poland’? Maybe there’s a bit more to it.
Reblogged this on Susanna Panevin.
Stalin did for the Soviet CP what Blair did to the British Labour Party and for that reason I despise them both more than Hitler and Thatcher,they were not only responsible for the deaths of millions but also killed off the noble ideals in whose name these crimes were committed.
Yes,the blood sacrifice of millions of Soviet soldiers and civilians is underestimated by many in the West,but please no simplistic jargon filled apology for the excesses of Stalin before, during and after WW2.
There are so many errors and omissions in this potted ‘redwash’ of history that it could have been written in the early 1950’s !
Unfortunately it helps feed the irrational anti Russian sentiment and skepticism which 70+yrs later, is still such a powerful political ace up the sleeve by cold war warriors,particularly those from the former occupied Eastern Europe states and Baltics.
I credit most Offguardian subscribers with enough historic understanding to read the article with a large pinch of Siberian salt.
The biggest contribution Stalin made in the war against fascism,was after contemplating surrendering ,he got off the escape train in Moscow station and handed the defense and military planning over to the generals of the Red Army.
His ego and jealousy resurfaced after the victory in 1945 along with the Stalin cult promoting, propaganda machine that claimed undue credit for the ‘Supreme Commander’ and downplayed the role of Timoshenko,Zhukov,Konev,Rokossovsky , treated those troops that fought in the streets of Berlin as ‘tainted through contact with the West’,surviving half starved Russian POWs as traitors.
Socialism is for the people and by the people,cannot be enforced through fear by a small powerful clique or rely on a false narrative.
A lesson yet to be learn t by the current Labour NEC and their Stalinist tactics.
It must be mentioned also that the Soviets and the Nazis signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact some time in late August 1939 after the USSR and Mongolia defeated Japan at the Battle of Khalkhin Gol in Mongolian territory. This defeat effectively forced Japan to give up invading and annexing Mongolian and Soviet territory and to concentrate on acquiring territory in Southeast Asia and the western Pacific. The pact was signed as much as to prevent a combined German-Japanese alliance attacking Soviet territory on two widely separated fronts, Germany from the west and Japan from the east, and the Soviets having to fight on both fronts thousands of kilometres apart
If this bloke thinks that Joe Stalin’s domestic death toll was ‘just one of those things’, as some people like to put it, I think he needs some moral re-education.
Joe Stalin’s death toll made Hitler’s final solution for the Jews seem like running a corner shop rather than the local Tescos. True, he only actively murdered about 1.5 million of them, but causing the deaths of 5 – 7 million through forced collectivisation and famine is hardly what you expect from a conservative, prudent leader of people, is it? It’s hard to decide how many sent to the Gulags were ‘killed’ as opposed to ‘died in incarceration’, but the historians reckon it was about 10 million more. I’m amazed more visionary leaders didn’t kidnap both him and Chairman Mao and tell them to live out their days under armed guard in the Taklamakan Desert……
So Comrade Djugushvilli of Georgia was definitely no lower than second-equal with Hitler as the 20th century’s greatest murderer and may well have been half way between Hitler and the ‘most civilising leader of 20th century history’, Chairman Mao Tse-Tung……..
I don’t see a word in the article about Stalin’s death toll being “just one of those things”. That “forced famine” – how well-documented is that? I mean how much was forced famine and how much was just unavoidable famine, due to war and the harsh sanctions the Soviets were under? Don’t leap on me, just asking!
Timothy Snyder’s “Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin” is well documented.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6572270-bloodlands?ac=1&from_search=true
Timothy’s Sndyer’s book is a joke.
it is known that Stalin and Mao both imposed ideological “solutions” with no concern for the repercussions (as do all politicians if they are ideology-driven rather than “what will work”). They just had the opportunity to affect more due to population size
So Stalin and Mao, who were “ideology-driven” in their thinking, were totally uninterested in what worked? That would seem to be strategically stupid. If something doesn’t work, then by definition it would undermine the legitimacy and social cohesion of the state and the country. You create a false dichotomy between ideology and pragmatism, one that is repeated ad nauseum by those who think that there is such a thing as a non-ideological solution to anything. Whether something is deemed to have “worked” is itself judged upon ideological criteria.
We must not whitewash Stalin and the USSR, while recognising the massive contribution the Russian people made (in fighting and dying) to defeat Germany.
In addition, there was the realpolitik to remember – France and Britain were both outgunned by Germany and had to re-arm before they could go to war (although Churchill – bless his belligerent cotton socks – was shouting for war). They also had to get their people ready: having fought a war to end all wars, to have another twenty years on wasn’t a minor item. I believe Chamberlain did try to buy time.
Of course, this isn’t to say that the spirit of the article isn’t true – the Establishment was much more comfortable with the National Socialists than with a party that had killed a Tsar and many other aristos, but we mustn’t be too simplistic, always question
Watch this all the way to the end & then decide who to Whitewash !
I admit that I didn’t watch the film, but my point was that Uncle Joe was no altruistic angel, and there were realpolitik reasons UK couldn’t have gone to war earlier than it did, as well as the Establishment reasons. I did not seek to whitewash anyone – I’ve been around too long to trust anyone with power
An accurate account of the duplicity of the Atlanticists and their willingness to engage with the murderous Hitler and his nazi thugs. No fan of Stalin, but he was caught between a rock and a hard place and both the US and Britain conspired against him in their self serving pursuit of traditional capitalism and Imperialism. The machinations between Churchill and his Tory Government and the US Washington connivance all but aided and abetted the rise to power of the Third Reich. This is not a secret, but politicians since have ever tried to gloss over not just the implications but the sheer treachery of the Atlanticists both sides of the pond. Then as now, we are co conspirators in the race for global domination and “spheres of influence” and misrepresent at every opportunity mainly through the corrupt MSM, our part in past wars of atrocity and present murderous attempts of land and resource acquisition. Though I may not speak kindly of Stalin, he has always been portrayed as the villain by the double standard west, never evidenced with facts and truths, which just get in the way of the chosen narrative, but very convenient opinion which served to hide the criminality of the Hitler “enablers”.
This article by Nikos Mottas,is, as far as I can recall from so many years ago, accurate both with fact and interpretation.
In other words, “He’s not wrong” but try hammering the truth home to blockheads who know nothing of the real history of that time.
I pretty much agree with this article though it has to be stated that Stalins Balkan policy was uncompromisingly aimed at finding buffer zones against Germany , and as regards Finland for example because Leningrad was so close to the Finnish/Russian border (20km) whilst indeed Finland offered territorial alternatives to Soviet demands. Indeed,The Molotov cocktail was indeed the drink to accompany the “Molotov bread baskets”,which is how Finlanders mocked Molotovs claim that Russian planes were only dropping food relief on Helsinki after their outrageous false flag attack on Finland in breach of the Treaty of Tartu 1920,following which the USSR was thrown out of the League of Nations. Molotov cocktails came to be manufactured by a Finnish factory as their only real anti-tank weapon and came with its own dedicated sachet of matches
“I pretty much agree with this article though it has to be stated that Stalins Balkan policy was uncompromisingly aimed at finding buffer zones against Germany …” [emphasis mine]
Do you perhaps mean ‘Baltic’?
Reblogged this on Worldtruth.
Thanks Nikos, these things cannot be repeated enough.