• ComradeSalad@lemmygrad.ml
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    1 year ago

    Broke: Germany started WW2 with the invasion of Poland

    Woke: Japan started WW2 with the invasion of China

    Ascended: Soviet Union started WW2 by invading Poland 2 weeks after the Germans

    • cayde6ml@lemmygrad.ml
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      1 year ago

      I don’t like to refer to military initiatives of the USSR to be invasions. I think it cedes ground to capitalists and falsely equivocates. The correct term is liberate.

      • ComradeSalad@lemmygrad.ml
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        1 year ago

        Its still an invasion by definition. What the intentions of the assaulting army are don’t matter in regard to whether a military undertaking is an invasion or not.

        We can’t just pick and choose good sounding names and assume that changes reality, or that by adhering to a definition that that somehow cedes ground.

        Invasion: A military offensive in which large numbers of combatants of one geopolitical entity enter territory owned by another such entity, generally with the objective of either: conquering; liberating or re-establishing control or authority over a territory, forcing the partition of a country; altering the established government or gaining concessions from said government; or a combination thereof.

          • ComradeSalad@lemmygrad.ml
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            1 year ago

            I understand, but we reach a point where that is simply not our problem anymore. We cannot try and make every little detail adhere to their worldview.

            If they make the equivalence, then so be it.

  • ColonelRevolution@lemmygrad.ml
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    1 year ago

    In Polish high schools they seriously teach that Soviets were in the alliance with III Reich and that Stalin supposedly admired Hitler (if I recall correctly skimming through my sister’s book).

    It goes deeper - they basically accuse the USSR of co-starting the World War II and other disgusting lies making communists look as bad or even worse than Nazis. It is formally approved as a school material and many if not most people unironically believe that the USSR was genocidal red-fascists empire.

    Since propagating communism is illegal here, bookstores don’t print almost any good literature that would counter the state propaganda and the country exists in a capitalist fantasy bubble.

    I was lucky enough to never trust educational system, but people who did are basically brain damaged now.

    Sorry for chaotic style but I’m sleep deprived and I wanted to share this atrocity while I remember, I may share some more information tomorrow.

      • ColonelRevolution@lemmygrad.ml
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        1 year ago

        Right? Funding media is one thing and using state/academic authority to alter history is a whole another level of crime. I borrowed the book from my sister to transcribe the chapter about USSR, I might share it as a curiosity later this week.

        There are few fragments straight from the official history textbook for secondary school in Poland:

        After Lenin’s death and against his will, [Stalin] became General Secretary of the party. During his reign he eliminated all his political opponents and implemented in the country industrialization and collectivization. These measures, together with widespread terror policy caused millions victims in the USSR. In 1939 Stalin collaborated with Hitler’s Germany, which resulted in assault on Poland and division of it’s terrotiry.

        (I bolded selected text by myself)

        "Even so Stalin continuosly tried to rebuild close relations with [nazi] Germany, because both countries still had the same political interests. Soviet dictator was impressed by panache and efficiency of Nazi regime. Special impression supposedly made on him “Night of the Long Knives”, when Hitler murdered his opposition inside the party […]. Even during bitter competition, both totalitarian powers tried to create a common border, but main obstacle was existence of independent Poland.

        Later on they write that both countries finally got to an agreement and launched a common assault on Poland, but Hitler supposedly betrayed Stalin and the alliance ended in 1941.

          • ColonelRevolution@lemmygrad.ml
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            1 year ago

            You can’t make this shit up. I mean, they made this up, but… 😆

            If you disagree with this you can get prosecuted by The Institute of National Remembrance – Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation which should be named something like The institute of making up history and fighting communism or something.

    • 201dberg@lemmygrad.ml
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      1 year ago

      The US based “history channel” has a big WW2 documentary that says Stalin was buddy buddy with Hitler until Hitler attacked the USSR and Stalin was taken by surprise. I believed it for years until I de-liberalled myself and learned real fucking history. The west is fucked.

      • Anatolianin@lemmygrad.ml
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        1 year ago

        I guess when USSR and Reich supported opposite sides during Spanish civil war it was a clear sign of friendship or something.

        • Shrike502@lemmygrad.ml
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          1 year ago

          I don’t recall this ever being mentioned in educational materials. I do recall my history schoolbook talking about Molotov-Ribbentrop “pact”, but never anything else. Not the Spanish civil war and who supported who there, not the many agreements between European countries and Nazis, nothing. IIRC it mentioned a “joint parade” between USSR and Nazis in Poland, though

        • 201dberg@lemmygrad.ml
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          1 year ago

          This was back in the earlier days of the history channel I think. Before they got into the crazier shit. Back when it was the “WWII and tanks” channel.

      • d-RLY?@lemmygrad.ml
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        1 year ago

        YO! I know exactly what you tare talking about. I saw that same shit at some point (I think around the time it first aired), and it had honestly painted my understanding of the start of WWII badly. Especially because back then I didn’t care about learning anything about the Soviet front as they were also always spoken about as being basically the same as the Nazis. WWII is always about the US “saving the day” when talking just about the war and not the genocide elements. I even have cringe memories of parroting the “Stalin and Hitler were best buds, and that Stalin basically only ever really trusted Hitler which fucked him up when Hitler turned on him” shit. Though it is personal cringe as I never got any push back or ever corrected, thankfully I don’t think I really focused on it enough to bring up with many people. I am just glad that even one other person remembered seeing that shit to verify it being a real line of “educational material.”

    • Wollff@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      So… What did happen in Poland then?

      Was there an agreement to carve it up between USSR and Nazi Germany, or not?

      • REEEEvolution@lemmygrad.ml
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        1 year ago

        Poland invaded the former Russian Empire during the russian civil war. It annexed large areas.

        The USSR tried to revive the Entente for years, but was rebuffed by France, GB and the US. Partially because local fascists, partially because these nations had no real interest in a new entente, partially because Poland lobbied against the USSR.

        Then the Munich conference happened. Previously the USSR was the only nation willing to military support Czechslovakia, but was denied military access by other countries to get there. Czechslovakia ceased to exist and was carved up by its neighbours.

        This made it clear to the USSR that their dream of a new Entente had ended and the western capitalist nations wanted to direct germany eastwards against them. So they did two things:

        1. Sign a non-agression-treaty with germany. As the last european state to do so. This lead Germany to move west first.
        2. Offer Poland a defensive treaty. Poland denied, because of anti-soviet tendency and pro-german one.

        So when Germany invaded Poland, the USSR did fuck all for two weeks. Then, after the polish government had left for exile, they moved to the territories Poland had annexed previously and occupied them. The Polish governments last order before exile were not to resist the Red Army.

          • m532@lemmygrad.ml
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            1 year ago

            Finland was nazi, it’s where the nazis got their hakenkreuz from

            • JucheBot1988@lemmygrad.ml
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              1 year ago

              Is the Hakenkreuz thing true? I was under the impression that the swastika was commonly used in Europe at the time as a symbol of “ancient wisdom” and of Europe’s “Aryan” past – especially by theosophists and the like. The Nazis simply adopted it because of its cultural resonance.

  • MarxMadness@lemmygrad.ml
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    1 year ago

    I guess the US and USSR were allies in the Cold War because they didn’t openly attack each other and occupied different halves of numerous countries

  • Life2Space@lemmygrad.ml
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    1 year ago

    It’s all true. If Russia didn’t turn socialist, Hitler wouldn’t have felt so insecure! He saw Stalin looking so handsome even though he ate all of Ukraine’s grain, so Hitler decided to destroy the USSR because if he couldn’t attain those levels of chad, then no one else can.

  • Chay@lemmygrad.ml
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    1 year ago

    It seems it was a mistake. They’ve changed the paragraph to:

    World War II reached what is now Ukraine in 1939 with a Soviet invasion into territory then controlled by Poland in western Ukraine, at a time when the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were in a military alliance. When that pact broke down in 1941, Germany attacked Ukraine from west to east.

    As the invasion began, factions of pro-independence Ukrainians fought with the Germans, while other Ukrainians fought with the Red Army against the Nazis. The tide of war changed in 1943 with the German defeat at the Battle of Stalingrad, and the Red Army then fought the Nazis in Ukraine moving westward.

    Was fun while it lasted I suppose. I wonder who those “pro-independence” Ukrainians were.

  • ihaveibs@lemmygrad.ml
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    1 year ago

    Man they have gone so hard on the “double genocide” narrative since the invasion. Its pretty astounding to witness in real time

  • Anarcho-Bolshevik@lemmygrad.ml
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    1 year ago

    Lel, 1939… aside from serving Eurocentrism, it’s an irresistible opportunity for antisocialists to put the Soviets and the German Fascists on the same level and make communists out to be ‘the bad guys’ again. Those are the only justifications. If I remember The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich correctly, the British government at the time implied that WWII still hadn’t begun yet (which they also said in 1931).

    There are numerous proposals better than 1939 for WWII’s first year. I’d go so far as to say that 1939 is the worst candidate of the bunch. There’s a reason that the period immediately afterward is called ‘the Phoney War’.