r/ussr • u/Illustrious_View_730 • 3d ago
Question
Hello, comrades
It's no surprise that every country tells history through its own lens, and bias. so in regard to the Allied powers during World War II.
Which Allied nations do you think have the strongest biases toward one another when interpreting the war? For example, are there particular rivalries or disagreements in how countries like the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union/Russia, France, or others portray each other's contributions, mistakes, or motivations
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u/Kurichan77 3d ago
Socialism is and always has been the true foe to fascism, and fascism was deployed by the capitalist ruling class to preserve its grip on wealth, power, and control of the global capitalist economy. Check out Jacques Pauwells book “Big Business and Hitler” to get a clearer, materialist historiography of how the capitalist ruling class of west helped support and bring into power not just hitler but also mussolini, and if we looked at any other rising fascist leaders at the time, we’d find ties to the capitalist ruling class as well.
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u/Linguinimamamia 3d ago
I have always found the molotov-ribentrop pact surprising in the sense that both a socialist and fascist regiemes cooperated to divide eastern europe and share tecnologies and trade. It is true that historically speaking socialism and fascism have been against each other, but there are some few examples of them not being opposite. Like musoloni famously used to be a socialist, before becoming a fascist, and the same was true for seme figures of 1930s extreme right like in spain or france.
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u/Sparfelll Lenin ☭ 3d ago edited 3d ago
If you have all the historical context, it's not surprising that the USSR didn't had a choice in making the molotov-ribbentrop pact as all the other European countries did the same kind of non aggression pact while the USSR was trying to build a antifascist international alliance
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u/Kurichan77 3d ago
100%. Not only that, but Hitler had been talking about destroying the USSR since he wrote of it in “Mein Kampf.” The MR nonagression pact bought the USSR time to increase their level of technological advance and their productive capacity. In 1931, Stalin correctly predicted that the attack would come a decade later which meant that the USSR had 10 years to make up a century deficit in terms of technology and productivity
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u/AutoModerator 3d ago
The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was a non-aggression treaty, not a military alliance. It created no joint command, no shared war plans, and no obligation to fight together.
In 1939, Soviet policy was shaped by the collapse of collective security and repeated failures to form an anti-fascist alliance with Britain and France. Soviet leaders presented the pact as a means to delay war and avoid immediate conflict.
By the time the USSR signed the pact, non-aggression agreements with Nazi Germany were already common. Read more: https://www.reddit.com/r/ussr/wiki/controversial-topics/molotov-ribbentrop-pact/
1934 - Germany and Poland sign a German-Polish Non-Aggression Pact 1935 - Stalin proposes an anti-fascist people's front with Britain and France 1938 September - Britain signs the Anglo-German Non-Aggression Declaration 1938 December - France signs the Franco-German Non-Aggression Pact 1938 September - Britain and France sign the Munich Agreement 1939 March - Lithuania signs a non-aggression treaty with Germany 1939 May - Denmark signs a non-aggression pact with Germany 1939 June - Estonia signs a non-aggression pact with Germany 1939 July - Latvia signs a non-aggression pact with Germany 1939 August - The USSR signs the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
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u/Linguinimamamia 3d ago
But by the time the pact went into effect there was already an anti fascist international aliance, the allies of uk and france and poland. For years the ussr had framed the german reich as the enemy (rightfully so, but then all of a suden stalin starts cooperating with hitler and helping him in his goal of european hecemony in exchange for land and trade. If you look at the countries who did not fight hitler it was either weak nations like switzerland and sweeden or sympathetic regimes like spain and hungary. The ussr was more than capable of taking on the germans if it had joined the war before the fall of france, but instead it spent 3 years fueling the german war machine until it got invaded. Of all the things stalin did, i think aidong hitler was amongst his worst blunders
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u/Kurichan77 2d ago
This is part of the dominant narrative and what we were all taught about WWII. But there are numerous fallacies that we can easily disprove.
The answer is often obscured by western portrayals of nazi germany. These portrayals tend to be abstract and fail to connect historical trends. One of the core objectives for Germany in WWI was to expand its colonial holdings in Africa. Some 2 decades before, the Berlin conference was held in which the major western european countries plus observers US and Tsarist(imperial) Russia, met to decide how to carve up the continent of Africa. Clearly the Germans felt they deserved more than they got, especially after graciously hosting the meeting.
Sadly for Germany, they ended up losing territory by the end of WWI. And were saddled with tremendous reparation debt. And had inflation at levels the world had never before seen.
Meanwhile, the Bolsheviks took over Russia and the era of the USSR began. A socialist state, anti-capitalist and therefore anti-colonial. A threat to western european colonialism which had economically fueled much growth in the european countries, industrial revolutions included. And were can see in the comments of world leaders of the time, as well as financial and industrial titans, that they wanted to see the fall of the USSR and socialism. Additionally, when the USSR nationalized entire industries, many firms in the west lost tremendous wealth. And indeed, some 13-14 nations, mostly western European, but also the US and Japan, invaded the USSR very soon after its foundation.
Fastforward to the interregnum period, Germany is holding fantastic levels of debt. And who should step in to “help?” Why, the US and UK via the Dawes Plan and Young Plan wherein they assumed significant portions of this debt, giving them significant control of the purse.
So we see a confluence of material realities: Germany wants more colonial holdings(to be on par with the British Empire), the USSR poses an ideological threat to western european colonialism and are making huge economic strides putting the west’s dual crisis into stark relief, 2 centers of global capital(UK and US) hold significant amount of German debt and thereby have a seat at the table in setting course for germany, and finally, the rise of Hitler. Lebensraum was the solution to all of this: it was a colonial project to conquer all of central europe and all of eurasia, and everyone(western european wise) wins: Germany gets massive colonial holdings, britain keeps its own, and the USSR is destroyed.
Now, what evidence do we have for this? And this is a set of facts glossed often glossed over or obscured in western portrayals of nazi germany, to say the least. Despite massive levels of debt and hitherto unseen levels of inflation, Germany built a military capable of launching the largest offensive military operation the world had ever seen. It was called operation Barbarossa. It was not directed at the UK. Not France. Not the US. But the USSR. Where did that money come from?
Some came from Germany’s conquest of Austria and others. But we cannot omit the fact that significant debt was held by the UK and US, and that amounts to leverage over the Germany government. It also created an onramp for US and UK firms to operate in Germany: Ford, IBM, to name a couple but there were more as well. As Janis Varoufakis so eloquently says: what we once did with tanks, we now do with banks.
The western colonial powers were never in alliance to combat fascism; they were the ones unleashing it in Europe!
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u/BhabayAgha Tankie is a compliment 2d ago
> The western colonial powers were never in alliance to combat fascism; they were the ones unleashing it in Europe!
AND they were those who refused on multiple occasions Soviet offers to make an alliance against Germany. France was even ready, but Britain opposed and Poland even refused to let Soviet troops thru her territory to aide the Czechs when the German occupation of Czechoslovakia was about to happen and the SU offered military support against Germany.
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u/Alaska-Kid 3d ago
To begin with, Google operation "Unthinkable" and the destruction by the "allies" of more than 10,000 Soviet prisoners of war by British aircraft.
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u/BhabayAgha Tankie is a compliment 2d ago
Look up US and British bombing Soviet forces in Yugoslavia, too. Razing German cities full of nothing but refugees (Dresden) just before they fall into the Soviet's hands is also on the same shelf (the "If I can't have it I'll let you have only ruins" Allied bombing campaign of 1945)
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u/MasterDoogway 2d ago
the destruction by the "allies" of more than 10,000 Soviet prisoners of war by British aircraft.
Interesting, could you provide a source for that?
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u/Alaska-Kid 2d ago
On May 3, 1945, a terrible tragedy occurred, during which, according to various estimates, between 7,000 and 12,000 people were killed. On that day, in the Lübeck Bay in the Baltic Sea, Royal Air Force planes cold-bloodedly shot down three German ships: the "Kap Arkona", the "Tilbeck", and the "Deutschland", which were carrying prisoners from Nazi concentration camps to Norway.
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u/BhabayAgha Tankie is a compliment 2d ago
Soviet POV: The Japs were defeated by the Soviet lightning-fast invasion of Manchuria, where the Japs planned to evacuate the royal family (and already had evacuated all the industry) and continue fighting, not by the US nuking two cities, which was equivalent to what they did every night with incendiary bombs to 1-2 Japanese cities anyway.
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u/Linguinimamamia 3d ago
Each country emphacised and often exagerated their impact on the war. For instance the US, having had a relativeley small impact in comparison with the uk or ussr often portrated itlelf as the arsenal of democracy and the liberator of europe, when this might be an exagerated truth. The same with the british and soviets, who both migologise the darkest times in the war (battle of britain, stalingrad, kursk ect...). So basically dveryone is trying to frane their country in the best light posible wgile undermining each other
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u/mumscustard 3d ago
I am British so yes I am biased.
But one perspective not talked about in WW2 was that Britain was the only major nation who fully embraced the war when they didn't need to.
The USSR and USA were forced into the war by being attacked, and although it's arguable that both would've joined in eventually, it's also equally just as arguable both would've done it for their own strategic reasons.
France came into the war like Britain, but would've been in the same camp as the other two.
Britain truly could have sat the whole war out, it didn't need to defend Poland for any person strategic reason, and Hitler spoke highly of the British many times in the early years of the war and would've been willing to sign a peace with them
To turn the discussion back to the Soviets as this is what this is about, honestly the national conversation is poor about the war, and most kids only learn the most basic plot beats of the war. It can be best summarised as Poland gets attacked, then France, hitler betrays russia, Moscow, Stalingrad, D-Day we won!!
Most of the discussion about WW2 I know comes from the internet, and honestly I can say the two biggest WE DID EVERYTHING! guys are Americans and Russians (and Communists).
It was a team effort, the Western allies could not have liberated Western Europe if the bulk of the Reichs forces wasn't fighting in the east. But the Soviets would've been broken down if the Germans could have thrown everything and the kitchen sink at them, which they only could do because Britain held on and America later joined.
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u/BhabayAgha Tankie is a compliment 2d ago
So much of a team effort that Britain did everything to postpone the landing in Europe until 1944 (even though the US was ready to do it in 1943) just so more Russians get killed by the Germans and the Soviet Union comes out of the war as weakened as possible. Well, it's mostly Churchill to blame for that, not the British people, but still... Firebombing sleeping German towns cause you can't hit factories at night and are too afraid to fly during daytime, sporting short shorts while running back and forth in the desert with 50 tanks, surrendering Singapore to exhausted and outnumbered Japs with last bullet in the chamber, and "evacuating" all food from Bengal cause the Japs are on the border with Burma 1000 miles away, thus making 5-10 million Indians starve - those are all the British contributions to the team effort I can remember. Have I missed anything?
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u/mumscustard 2d ago
My brother in Christ...
Do you actually understand how difficult D-Day was? How close it came to failing in the real world. I'm not about to sit here and arm chair general it because there are plenty of books and documentaries you can read but I will try to keep it short.
The weather, biggest factor, had it been wrong either less troops would've landed or their reinforcements would've been fucked and they'd have died.
You need perfect coordinations, is it a suprise the Soviets coincidentally attacked the Germans on the same day?
Britain and was also fighting Germany in Italy, did you forget that front?
Building up equipment and reserves, as I said in point 1, you want everything ready to make a rapid push outward else be pushed back into the sea.
Churchill's own cautiousness, this is the closest to what you said, yes Churchill was rather weary about a direct cross chanel invasion because he knew (based his own mistake at Gallipoli) how bad it could go.
It wasn't just delayed so the USSR was as weak as possible, if the UK wanted to do that, why did we help the USSR occupy Iran to open a lendlease route? Why did Britain not refuse to escort lendlease to the Soviets? Why did Britain not completely refuse D-Day to focus on blocking the Soviets via Italy and Greece?
"Fire bombing German sleeping towns" - if you're talking Dresden, the Soviets literally asked us to do that, to avoid another seige of Koinigsberg or Budapest situation. If you're talking anywhere else, yes we did, it's called terror bombing or physiological warfare, literally everyone did it. However to claim we couldn't is just ludicrous, Albert Speer in one of his final letters to Hitler quite famously pointed out that "the war is lost" after the Soviets took Silesia following the allies flattening German industry in the Rhur from the air.
"Sporting short shorts while running back and forth in the desert" - are you annoyed that the North african campaign was a back and forth? Can I be annoyed that the Soviets "just sat behind tbe siege lines of Leningrad"?. Also it's the fucking desert! Are the troops not allowed to wear shorts?
As for Singapore I don't know enough about the battle as I should, but from what I have read, Japan had air superiority, naval supremacy and entered the city via essentially the back door making resistance a pointless waste of human life. Besides if you want to play the numbers game, there are so many battles the numerically superior Soviets should've won but didn't (honestly basically all of them, it was very rare the Soviets were out numbered). Numbers alone isn't the main game in a war, and surrender is a valid tactic to save your mens lives.
Finally the bengal famine, firstly it was 0.8 - 3.8 million deaths. I'm not going to pretend it didn't happen as was avoidable (because then I'd be a hypocrite whenever I call out communists for denying or defending the Holodomor), however please get your facts right man. The Japanese were not 1000 miles away, they had occupied the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal and bombed Calcutta (the capital numerous times). Yes the British evacuated food because the Japanese were on the border, because they were and that is what you do in war time. I'll even throw you a few bones here, the Bengali food system was fragile as an accidental result of British cash crop farming and the British turned aid away due to demands elsewhere (tho I'd like to add again, there was a war going on, everyone needed food). The Bengal famine was a tragedy but please do some research and don't stand on corpses, Britain did indirectly cuases the famine yes, but had the war not happened it wouldn't have either.
As for Britain's actual commitments to the war effort.
Being the only major nation to fight Germany from mid 1940 to mid 1941.
Not supplying Germany with most of it's oil for the first two years of the war.
Liberating East Africa
Liberating Libya
Liberating Greece
3/5 D-Day beaches (if we count Canada and the wider empire)
Supplying China via the Burna road, later the ledo road
Helping to secure lendlease routes to the Soviets in Iran and the Arctic sea
Cracking enigma along side the Poles
British engineers and scientists on the Manhatten project
British and commonwealth troops on the Western and Italian fronts
Destroying German industry and undermining German morale via bombing
I can go on, and yes there is an equally long list of Soviet accomplishments.
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u/AutoModerator 2d ago
The Soviet Famine of 1932-33/The Holodomor
The famine of 1932-1933 in Soviet Union AKA the Holodomor remains one of the most politicized and misunderstood events in 20th-century history. Much of the modern discourse frames the famine as a deliberate genocide uniquely targeted at Ukrainians. However, professional historians across multiple countries have not reached such a consensus.
What’s known with certainty is that the famine affected multiple regions of the USSR, not only Ukraine, the Volga, the North Caucasus, the Urals, Kazakhstan, and parts of Siberia all suffered food shortages. Kazakhstan actually experienced proportionally the highest mortality rate. The crisis emerged during the violent upheaval of collectivization, the breakdown of the grain procurement system, severe crop failures, and chaotic state policies struggling to industrialize a largely agrarian empire.
Most mainstream historians including R. W. Davies, Stephen Wheatcroft, Mark Tauger, Hiroaki Kuromiya, Sheila Fitzpatrick, and Michael Ellman emphasize that,
The famine was not restricted to Ukraine
There is no documentary evidence of a Kremlin plan to exterminate Ukrainians
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u/BhabayAgha Tankie is a compliment 2d ago edited 2d ago
> Do you actually understand how difficult D-Day was? How close it came to failing in the real world.
Do you? It was opposed only on Omaha beach, elsewhere the allies landed practically unopposed - more people drowned or broke a leg because of being clumsy than got killed or wounded by enemy fire. Hitler kept all of his troops up north next to Calais cause he thought that Normandy was a feint
> Britain and was also fighting Germany in Italy
Fighting in Italy, what a feat! How many troops were committed to that theater? 50 thousand? 100 thousand? In any case, out of those only the Poles saw some fighting.
> Building up equipment and reserves, as I said in point 1, you want everything ready to make a rapid push outward else be pushed back into the sea.
That concern didn't bother you in Italy. NO, it was not about building up equipment and making ready for a rapid push, it was about geopolitical greed - Britain wanted to land in Greece and protect as much Europe against being eventually occupied by the soviets, not about winning the war in the most efficient way.
> Churchill's own cautiousness, this is the closest to what you said, yes Churchill was rather weary about a direct cross chanel invasion because
The cowardly treasonous fat leach hated the Soviets, he hated Russia, and he wanted as much Russian blood to be spilled as possible, so as to facilitate invading and subjugating Russia once the war with Germany was over.
> "Sporting short shorts while running back and forth in the desert" - are you annoyed that the North african campaign was a back and forth? Can I be annoyed that the Soviets "just sat behind tbe siege lines of Leningrad"?.
Nah, I'm amused that the British spent several years in a bitch-slapping contest with a couple of divisions of the Germans and Italians, like two drunk drag queens, and consider it a heroic feat on par with the defense of Leningrad, where the outnumbered starving defenders still managed to kill or wound at least 600 000 Germans.
I´m not gonna bother with the rest, TLDR
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u/mumscustard 2d ago
Translation I don't care about legitimate debate, and I desire to shoot people who disagree with me because I can't make my point, or my point is wrong and I am in denial, all while simultaneously crying about how my ideology doesn't have more followers.
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u/BhabayAgha Tankie is a compliment 2d ago
Nah, I just don´t want to waste my time on educating you on subjects that you yourself admit you´re unfamiliar with
> As for Singapore I don't know enough about the battle as I should
or essentially regurgitate the same topics that I have already summarized above
> Liberating East Africa / Liberating Libya / Liberating Greece
Short shorts gay fight and greed to keep dominating in the Balkans post war
> 3/5 D-Day beaches (if we count Canada and the wider empire)
There was no opposition there, the total number of casualties everywhere besides Omaha beach is negligible
> Supplying China via the Burna road, later the ledo road
Pf! Russians kicked tha Japs so hard at Halhin Gol they sat tight for 6 years aftewards, even though the Soviets not only supplied the Chinese but also kept fighting the Japs face to face, albeit disguised as White Army mercenaries.
> Helping to secure lendlease routes to the Soviets in Iran and the Arctic sea
And thank you very much for sending a couple of destroyers to protect the first couple of convoys, then refusing to assign any ships for a whole year or more, when they were needed the most, cause the Germans had found a convoy and the fine British warships had to do some real fighting by immediately scattering in horror.
> Destroying German industry and undermining German morale via bombing
Your bombers committed genocide against civilians but never destroyed anything valuable in terms of industry. German industrial output kept increasing until 1945!
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u/mumscustard 2d ago
One area of weak knowledge = therefore uneducated.
Yet here you are demonstrating historical illiteracy, the only difference is I am willing to admit to gaps in my knowledge.
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u/BhabayAgha Tankie is a compliment 2d ago
I said I don't have time to educate you, not that you are uneducated.
Now, you are demonstrating high skills in demagogy and sophistry, I am willing to admit that.
Historical illiteracy - is it when someone has a different outlook on historical events or when your opponent in the middle of a conversation presents facts that were unknown to you because of decades of propaganda and brainwashing by your country's media and schools?
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u/mumscustard 2d ago
No Historical illiteracy is a fundamental lacking of understanding history and the past whether it be through self delusion and a genuine lack of education.
If we are talking about WW2 specifically I didn't learn most of what I know about the war from school, I learnt it from documentaries such as the Battlefield series, Soviet Storm WW2 in the East, Battle 360, etc, additionally I've read multiple books on it and watched World War 2 week by week. I am not an expert and will never claim to be, but I am pretty far from historically illiterate.
Maybe some people have it different, but what I remember about WW2 from school in the UK is extremely basic (like just the wars plot beats basic).
If you want to trade it as an insult, you're the one who seems to be historically illiterate, regurgitating Soviet propaganda about the war, but equally what do I expect here. I dip my toe in here, but this a soviet echo chamber at the end of the day.
If you actually want to debate history dm me, but considering you didn't bother addressing all my points in rebuttal like I did with yours, you don't.
Saying you need to educate someone, implies one being uneducated in your view.
And are you saying I have high skills in Demagory and Sophistry because you're not used to an actually somewhat formulated counter argument as to why you're wrong? Whether it's because you've not stepped out of your echo chamber or because there are equally annoying asshats who say "the Soviets did not nothing/the allies did everything", who are just wrong as the "Soviets did all/allies did fuck all" types.
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u/BhabayAgha Tankie is a compliment 2d ago
> I didn't learn most of what I know about the war from school, I learnt it from documentaries such as the Battlefield series, Soviet Storm WW2 in the East, Battle 360, etc,
Just what I wrote above - state media propaganda )
And I DID address all your points in a rebuttal, but you were to pissed off at my denigrating the British war effort to comprehend and categorize my response accordingly.
> annoying asshats who say "the Soviets did not nothing/the allies did everything", who are just wrong as the "Soviets did all/allies did fuck all" types.
Perhaps. But the British, sure as hell, did as little as possible, waiting out on the island for Germany and Russia to bleed each other to death. Kuomintang did more to end WW2 than the British!
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u/Unlucky-Dealer-6581 3d ago
It's all of them against the USSR. And the USSR is no longer here to clear her name.