[clanky]

"surprised Pikachu face" lmao, just absurdly arrogantly wrong. Molotov-Ribbentrop was Stalin's last resort and (successful) bid for time and breathing room after trying and failing numerous diplomatic efforts to unite the Allies against Hitler. Many of those Allies were explicit, at the time, about their desire to use Nazi Germany to inflict a mortal blow on the godless communists in Moscow.

[Aloisius]

Em. After Molotov-Ribbentrop, the Soviet Union tried to formally join the Axis as the fourth Axis power.

It's hard to argue that was to buy time, especially given they had spent more effort conquering their neighbors and helping the Nazis than building defenses against the them. They just wanted a larger chunk of Europe and Western Asia.

Their attempt failed because Stalin got greedy with what chunk of Europe he wanted and their poor performance against Finland convinced the Nazis to double cross them and invade.

[clanky]

Hitler offered the Soviets to join the Axis in 1940, predicated on a bunch of conditions that they refused to accept. Where in the world did you come up with this completely false reinterpretation of that as "the Soviets tried to join the Axis"?

[Aloisius]

To describe the Soviet-Nazi discussions to join the Axis as the Soviets refusing because of Nazi demands is certainly an odd view of history especially given how Stalin's proposal, one he personally drafted, was received.

Perhaps this was one of the self-serving Soviet narratives, like the nonsense of having to side with the Nazis and invalid Poland because the Allies refused them - as opposed to actively double dealing and choosing the Axis because they offered the best deal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German%E2%80%93Soviet_Axis_tal...

[clanky]

"How Stalin's proposal was received"

Are you referring to this?

Regarding the counterproposal, Hitler remarked to his top military chiefs that Stalin "demands more and more", "he's a cold-blooded blackmailer" and "a German victory has become unbearable for Russia" so that "she must be brought to her knees as soon as possible."[12] Hitler had already decided to invade the Soviet Union in July 1940,[13] but this apparently accelerated the process.

It all goes back to what Zhukov said, "we rescued Europe from fascism, and they will never forgive us for it."

And of course the Allies' own self-serving behavior and cutting deals with Hitler, or leaving the internal dissident generals within the Wehrmacht to twist in the wind, is always to be completely ignored, the fruits of four decades of history textbooks published by Ghislaine Maxwell's capitalist spook father.

[ciupicri]

> we rescued Europe from fascism, and they will never forgive us for it

Yeah, they "rescued" it alright. Like they rescued, err stolen, Moldova from Romania and they kept it for more than 40 years. Heck, they're still messing with it. Then at the end of the war they robbed and raped civilians from the countries they "liberated".

[yks]

> we rescued Europe from fascism, and they will never forgive us for it.

is that why modern Russia bankrolling every fascist party under the sun?

[clanky]

Are you under the misapprehension that Putin's Russian Federation represents some kind of line of succession from the USSR?

[pqtyw]

What about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German%E2%80%93Soviet_Commerci...

Then?

Germany would have quite literally run out of oil (and other materials and even grain) a few months after conquering Poland. Most was imported was imported from the Americas before the war.

The French and British could have pretty much waited Germany out had Stalin decided not to bankroll the Nazis invasions of Norway and France. The allies were quite seriously considering bombing Soviet oil fields in Azerbaijan before France fell.

Presumably Stalin was hoping to prop-up Germany just long enough for them to get stuck in a protracted war in France so that he could swop in and "liberate" Europe. Unfortunately for millions it turned out to be a slight miscalculation...

[yks]

Nah, Stalin didn’t anticipate the attack. And also deposing capitalist regimes, in what would become Allies, was famously the long-standing goal of the USSR

[clanky]

Those capitalist regimes were messing with the USSR continually from the moment of its inception, of course both sides were trying to undermine the other. Only one resorted to the sorts of terror tactics exemplified by the Phoenix Project, Operation Gladio, and the like.

[pqtyw]

> from the moment of its inception

Also saved millions of people from starvation in the early 20s by ending a devasting famine while the Soviets were busy blowing up their economy.

It's not exactly obvious that the Bolshevik regime would have survived the famine of 1921–1922 had Hoover et al. not bailed them out...

[ImJamal]

Of course you missed one major thing. The capitalist regime of Germany was responsible for the creation of the USSR.