[forgotpwtomain]

> Hardly morally equivalent.

The Munich Agreement explicitly excluded the Soviet Union because the Western Allies hoped that Hitler would set his sights on the Communists and leave the West alone. By the time of the Molotov pact the USSR really had little to no choice.

The invasion of Poland by the USSR was criminal but whether Poland got divided or not was probably going to have little impact on the more general course of WWII at that point, in 1938 perhaps it still could have been averted (at least at the scale at which it occurred). Actually up until the pact in 1939 Stalin was still hoping for an alliance with the West.

[Theodores]

The post WW2 Poland was a creation of the Western powers, there was fighting into the 1920's in 'Poland' - the war only ended in 1918 for some but not all. There were the mass migrations and ethnic cleansings going on as this new Poland stitched together some backstory of nationhood that was fairly confabulated.

https://nzhistory.govt.nz/media/photo/map-russian-empire-191...

If you look at the 1914 map you see that Churchill and co bundled up a bit of three former empires to build out this new nation. I imagine if there was some conflict in America and Texas was bundled off with a chunk of Mexico to form 'Greater Texas' as a new sovereign state, with the borders being drawn up by Russia and China, then I imagine it would not take much for the U.S.A. to 'invade' this 'Greater Texas' and to collaborate with Mexico to restore the borders.

[clock_tower]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partitions_of_Poland

Note the first picture in 1772 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partitions_of_Poland#/media/Fi...), showing a Poland that looks remarkably like the Poland of 1939.

[Theodores]

Exactly. Much like Texan people possibly have forefathers that liberated the lebensraum from its previous occupants, and wouldn't want their work to be undone, with land returned to some tribes now banished to the poor quality land, the Russians and Prussians weren't seeing that 1772 map like you do. Different times.

[clock_tower]

So, if Hitler had successfully made the Volga into Germany's Mississippi, and then 200 years passed, it would be unjust to demand that the Third Reich give the land back to its former inhabitants? (Russians, Ukrainians, Poles, etc.)

[candiodari]

Yes. Since you seem to be a fan of hyperbole, allow me to put why in hyperbole :

The islamic conquest started in a small village near Mecca, more like a square with some tents. Big tents, but tents. This is according to their own legend. Now on the lands they conquered and massacred their way across, there is about a billion people that are very different from the original inhabitants of those lands.

Let put em back in that small village and give Saudi Arabia back to the Jews (the south) and recreate the Eastern Roman Empire and give the North to them !

The same modulo historic details is true for Europe, Asia, Australia, South America, even Africa. The group currently living there either fought or massacred it's way to control of those lands.

[clock_tower]

It surprises me that "Hitler was wrong" is hyperbole now.

The Islamic conquests are the same situation as the American conquests: numbers make it impossible to give the land back to the surviving descendants of the conquered, but they shouldn't be treated as second-class citizens of their own countries. The conquerors' descendants should stop celebrating the conquest; they should acknowledge that what their ancestors did was profoundly wrong; and they should give the conquered peoples more privileges and social prestige than the conquerors, not less.

[mc32]

Didn't Russia/USSR basically do just that to the transural part of Russia/USSR? I don't think anyone today would think of devolving that part of Russia (or for that Matter China devolve Machuria (as the Japanese were hoping to do in wwII))

Once things settle down like that it's been too long and practical assimilation into the victors has long happened.

There are a few exceptions when the people are too dissimilar and assimilation has not completed as in Turkey and the Kurds.

[jessaustin]

I'm not a fascist like others in this thread seem to be, but yeah, after 200 years everybody and their grandchildren are dead, so it's unreasonable to pick long-healed scabs, even if the other guys were real assholes back then. The only possible results are negative for most living people. We in the West didn't approve when the Serbians tried this maneuver...

[clock_tower]

Thanks for your answer, to begin with!

But looking at the American Indians' situation, I'm not entirely convinced. The descendants of the expropriated Indians are strangers in their own country just like their ancestors were -- the effects of a land grab or whatever don't end with the deaths of the perpetrators and victims. If handing the land back isn't possible (too many whites, blacks, and others for everyone to emigrate, and not nearly enough Indians to inhabit the country afterwards), then giving the dispossessed tax exemptions and other privileges is certainly a good idea.

As far as Serbia, I was going to disagree with the particulars of your example until I realized that you meant the Kosovo War, not the Yugoslav Wars. That's a related but at least equally thorny question, I think: is there a point at which facts on the ground can override historic rights? My instinct is to say no: if the Serbs can't grab the parts of Bosnia inhabited by Serbs, the Albanians can't grab the parts of Serbia inhabited by Albanians. I think that should be uncontroversial in this context, but it gets more troublesome when you try applying it further back in history...

So, I guess the smartest thing you can do when conquering a region is to allow and encourage the conquered people to join the conquerer's society, and to treat them as first-class citizens when brought on board. That worked for the Roman Empire -- and it's honestly not a bad way to treat conquered peoples.

[petre]

> after 200 years everybody and their grandchildren are dead

But their culture and the memory of genocide isn't.

[vkou]

Yes, and the price of that alliance would have been Eastern Poland.