The soviets tried forming an anti-nazi alliance before the war started. Promising to send in a million men. They were turned down and upon realising they were on their own, seeked out a non-aggression pact with the Nazis (which everyone had already done up to that point).

[–] Pajonk@szmer.info -2 points 1 month ago (13 children)

They were turned down and upon realising they were on their own

And that's way they signed Ribbentrop-Molotov pact, and then together with Nazis, they attacked Poland?

Nice strategy.

[–] Oppopity@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 month ago (12 children)

No they signed a non-aggression pact which everyone else had done at the time. The pact had spheres of influence, a clear "don't fuck with us when we do things here and we won't fuck with you do things there" there was nothing in it that said anything about some military alliance to invafe Poland.

Molotov-Ribbentrop was signed 2 weeks before the nazi invasion of Poland and 1 week before it was signed by the supreme soviet. You don't attack a country together within a week that requires months of time planning.

The Nazis invaded Poland and the polish government went into exile so the soviets rushed in to prevent land that was historically part of their territory and inhabited by many ethnic Belorussians and Ukrainians from being occupied by the Nazis. Land that had been taken from them by Poland in their war of aggression to achieve their maximum historical borders even though as I mentioned had spent so much time outside of Polish control now had sizable Belarusian and Ukrainian inhabitants.

Of course, were we to live in a timeline where the soviets did leave all of Poland to be occupied by the Nazis. Idiots like you would be going on about how stupid and evil the soviets were for not doing anything from preventing the land from falling into Nazi hands. Doing nothing to protect the people living there when they had the opportunity and allowing the Nazis to get a border even closer.

[+] Pajonk@szmer.info -1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

You're getting called fash because you're using fascist talking points regarding the soviets.

The communists spent the decade prior trying to form an anti-Nazi coalition force, such as the Anglo-French-Soviet Alliance which was pitched by the communists and rejected by the British and French. The communists hated the Nazis from the beginning, as the Nazi party rose to prominence by killing communists and labor organizers, cemented bourgeois rule, and was violently racist and imperialist, while the communists opposed all of that.

When the many talks of alliances with the west all fell short, the Soviets reluctantly agreed to sign a non-agression pact, in order to delay the coming war that everyone knew was happening soon. Throughout the last decade, Britain, France, and other western countries had formed pacts with Nazi Germany, such as the Four-Power Pact, the German-French-Non-Agression Pact, and more. Molotov-Ribbentrop was unique among the non-agression pacts with Nazi Germany in that it was right on the eve of war, and was the first between the USSR and Nazi Germany. It was a last resort, when the west was content from the beginning with working alongside Hitler.

Harry Truman, in 1941 in front of the Senate, stated:

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.

Not only that, but it was the Soviet Union that was responsible for 4/5ths of total Nazi deaths, and winning the war against the Nazis. The Soviet Union did not agree to invade Poland with the Nazis, it was about spheres of influence and red lines the Nazis should not cross in Poland. When the USSR went into Poland, it stayed mostly to areas Poland had invaded and annexed a few decades prior. Should the Soviets have let Poland get entirely taken over by the Nazis, standing idle? The West made it clear that they were never going to help anyone against the Nazis until it was their turn to be targeted.

Katyn gets pinned on the Soviets because Goebbels reported on it and it became a useful story, but the execution method was distinctly Nazi, ie killing men, women, and children from behind into mass graves. The ammunition was German-produced in 1941, and the rope used to bind the hands of the victims was German made.

The Soviets absolutely killed Polish soldiers, but the character of their involvement was not anywhere close to what the Nazis reported. Calling it "genocide" while Nazi-occupied Poland was subject to the Holocaust is tantamount to Holocaust trigialization. There's mountains of evidence against the documents listed as "proof" of Soviet guilt in the Katyn Massacre:

The mistakes and inconsistencies in this letter are many. To start, the letter is “Top Secret”. Standard procedure for a “Top Secret” letter were to write on the letter the name of the person who typed it, the names of all the persons who have seen the document, the names of all persons to whom this letter is to be sent, the number of copies made of this letter, the carbon paper used to make a copy of it and finally the tape of the typewriter used to make this paper. For the “Beria document”, none of these exist. Without these precautions, it is not a “Top Secret” letter. The forger of this document either was not aware of the requirements of a “Top Secret” paper, or such requirements could not be forged by them. Either way, this paper immediately looses its value, and furthermore shows it is a forgery.

But the mistakes do not stop here. The signatures of the members of the Politburo go against the form. In this letter, 4 members of the Politburo have simply signed their names. By this act, they have rejected the request of Beria. You see, if the members of the Politburo agreed to send out an order or to carry out a request, it was necessary for them to sign the document, and to write next to their signatures “agreed” or “after”. In order for the request to be agreed and the order to be sent out, the members had to express their agreement to the request or their agreement to an order being sent. If they simply signed the paper, it meant that the members had read the document, but had not agreed to it and had not sent out any orders. The forger was obviously not aware of this and has made the mistake. Even if this request is authentic, which it is not, it was not accepted by the Politburo.

On the first page of the document, along with the four signatures of Stalin, Molotov, Mikoyan and Voroshilov, the forger added the names of Kaganovich and Kalinin underneath these. What the forger was not aware of, is that both Kaganovich and Kalinin were absent from the 13th Session of the Politburo in March 1940. They could not have placed their signatures on this document.

Skip to the "forgeries" section.

Again, the reason you're getting called fascist is because you are regurgitating fascist talking points surrounding the soviets.

[+] Pajonk@szmer.info -1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

Incorrect.

Had the USSR attacked Nazi Germany, they would have lost. The west was non-commital and refused to make an anti-Nazi alliance with the soviets, despite a decade of trying to form one, and evidence that the west would help the Nazis if the USSR attacked first. What the soviets did instead was prevent the Holocaust from spreading. There was no genocide committed by the soviets against the Polish, this is fascist Double Genocide Theory.

Everyone agrees that soviets did it. There is no other way. Sorry, but you don’t have any evidence, and pretending that some soviets documents might not be real, does not change the facts. Genocide did on a soviet soil, on the people arrested by soviets. A lot of letters and so on were found, and we know that soviets did it.

This is cope. You have no proof nor explanation why the execution method was distinctly Nazi, ie killing men, women, and children from behind into mass graves, nor why the ammunition was German-produced in 1941, and the rope used to bind the hands of the victims was German made, nor why the supposed "evidence" is marked with fabrications, nor why eyewitnesses claimed the Nazis did it. Just claiming I have no evidence despite the fact that your only evidence is Geobbels doesn't make you right.

I’m facist because I’m saying the same thing as russian historians, and government, stating that russia attacked Poland in 1939, and then soviets are responsible for Katyn?

You're getting called a fascist because you're an anti-communist that is repeating narratives created by Nazi propagandists, including Double Genocide Theory.

[–] Oppopity@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I love how the Nazis were causing havock across the east massacring everything to colonise the land they felt entitled to because of their supposed master race. Yet the moment the soviets start pushing them back and shattering their delusions they immediately call fowl and point to a massacre that looked like what they themselves had been doing the entire time. Basically saying to the west "No no guys stop fighting us. It's the soviets that are the REAL bad guys look what they did! You should be fighting alongside us instead"

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 month ago

Yep, Geobbels was even upset at first that the Nazis rediscovered Katyn and thought it would be bad PR for them, before inventing the soviet story.

[+] Pajonk@szmer.info -1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Yes, the post-Communist government tried to discredit the socialist system, but this is cope. You have no proof nor explanation why the execution method was distinctly Nazi, ie killing men, women, and children from behind into mass graves, nor why the ammunition was German-produced in 1941, and the rope used to bind the hands of the victims was German made, nor why the supposed “evidence” is marked with fabrications, nor why eyewitnesses claimed the Nazis did it. Just claiming I have no evidence despite the fact that your only evidence is Geobbels doesn’t make you right.

Not true, more and more western countries were anti nazi.

Incorrect.

Nazis started the war, on the first september. That’s the fact. A lot of western countries had pact with Poland, and protested against the aggression. Then two weeks later Soviet Union attacked Poland. This is also fact. Soviet union started war with Poland on 17 September.

1931 is a more accurate starting date, when Japan invaded Manchuria, or even 1938 when the west partitioned Czechoslovakia. When the Nazis invaded Poland, Nazi Germany was seen antagonistically in the west, but not the Soviet Union, who waited 2 weeks, prevented the Nazis from taking all of Poland and thus spared half of Poland from the Holocaust, and stuck to the areas Poland had invaded and annexed from Ukraine, Lithuania, Hungary, etc. earlier.

So, official statement from russian government and historians is cope? Dude. And how it was possible, that thousands of people arrested by Soviet union somehow would be killed by nazis?

An official statement by the anti-communists, yes. Historians don't actually agree on the incident, mainly because the execution method was distinctly Nazi, ie killing men, women, and children from behind into mass graves, the ammunition was German-produced in 1941, and the rope used to bind the hands of the victims was German made, the supposed “evidence” is marked with fabrications, and eyewitnesses claimed the Nazis did it.

You know that there are so many options. Even in the east block, there were communists that were not supporting Stalin? So anyone who isn’t ok with what stalin did, is a fach? Dude…

I'm specifically calling out the fact that you are gleefully repeating Nazi propaganda as fash, not merely disagreeing with the communists. Your comments were removed for that reason.

[+] Pajonk@szmer.info -1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

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[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

So everyone lies, historians, facts, logic, government, everyone. And soviets did not attack Poland, and did not try genocide? Seems legit :D

Nope, just the post-soviet anti-communist government and the fascists. No modern historian genuinely believes the soviets ever committed genocide. The soviets did indeed attack Poland, but the Nazis committed the Katyn Massacre and the Holocaust, not the soviets.

Ok, wait, so since Poland and nazi germany signed the pact, this means that we don’t know who attacked Poland? XD And then who attack Poland two weeks later, if Soviets also had this pact with Poland. Interesting…

You're confusing my point being about how the west loved the Nazis and the soviets hated them, with saying the soviets never attacked Poland. They did, and I never denied that, just soviet guilt in Katyn or claims of "genocide" by the soviets, which is fascist fiction.

So the polish army will be massacred, so there no one will resist that much. Soviet union attacking Poland, and doing what they agreed with Nazis in the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact is not a surprise to any historian.

The Soviets never agreed to invade Poland in the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. They agreed to lines that the other should not cross in the advent of war, which the Nazis were well on their way to violate had the soviets not taken the areas Poland invaded and anexxed prior. Neither power expected the pact to hold, either, the soviets expected Nazi betrayal and the Nazis knew they were going to break the pact, both understood it as a measure to buy time, so any "agreements" weren't worth shit.

Yes, let us keep ignoring fact, that poles were arrested by soviets, and then nazis found them dead, in a mass graves, on territory occupied by Soviets for a long time before nazis were there. But let’s play it according to your vision. So somehow nazis were able to hijack thousands of people arrested by soviets, then kill them, and then go back to nazi germany?

From this excellent post by comrade Anarcho-Bolshevik:

According to the information of the special committee of N. N. Burdenko, ‘the mass shootings of the Polish war prisoners from the above mentioned camps took place in the Katyń forest in Autumn 1941… The forensic medical inquest established beyond doubt: a) time of shooting — Autumn 1941; b) during the shooting the [Fascist] butchers acted in their standard manner (pistol shot into the back of one’s head) which they resorted to in all mass executions of the Soviet citizens in Orel, Voronezh, Krasnodar and Smolensk… The conclusions from the evidence made by the witnesses and the results of forensic medical inquest on the shooting of the Polish prisoners of war is fully corroborated by material evidence and documents extracted from the Katyn graves’.

‘The condition of corpses allowed to establish that the murder of the Polish officers was committed in Autumn 1941. Letters and other material evidence were found in the clothes of the murdered. They pertained to the end of 1940 or the beginning of 1941: a letter sent from Warsaw on September 12, 1940 and received first in Moscow on September 28, 1940.

Many other documents were found on the corpses, including letters and receipts dated November 12, 1940, April 6, 1941, June 20, 1941. One should also take into account that the [Fascist] masters of fabrication did utmost in order to destroy a considerable part of the materials which contradicted their version of shooting the Polish officers in Spring 1940’.

But even before the Burdenko committee started to work the experts from the Polish Red Cross sent by Germans to Katyń established that the bullets which were used to kill the officers were made in Germany.

At the Nuremberg trial the assistant of the main prosecutor of the USSR L. N. Smirnov submitted a cable sent from Smolensk to Krakow on April 20, 1943 by an official of the General‐Government Heinrich to a senior counsellor Weirauch: ‘A group of the Polish Red Cross delegation has returned from Katyń yesterday. The employees of the Polish Red Cross brought with them cartridge‐cases, used during the shooting of the victims in Katyn. It turned out that they constitute German ammunition. Their calibre is 7.65, the producing firm is ‘Geko’. The details are in a letter which is being sent. Heinrich’.

It was an unpleasant surprise for Goebbels. On May 8, 1943 he wrote down in his diary: ‘Unfortunately German ammunition has been found in the graves of Katyń. The question of how it got there needs clarification’. It is evident that Goebbels immediately started to invent plausible explanations. This is why he wrote: ‘It must be either the ammunition sold by us during the period of our friendly arrangement with the Soviet Russians, or else the Soviets themselves threw it into graves’.

The absurdity of such explanations was evident. There was no ground to suppose that the Red Army used German ammunition for their rifles and pistols. One can’t imagine that the German cartridge‐cases were thrown into graves by the Soviet people on purpose in order to deceive the world public opinion.

In this case one should suppose that the Soviet authorities knew in Spring 1940 that Smolensk would be taken by [anticommunists] and they would find the graves with the bodies of the Polish officers. One should also suppose that as soon as the [anticommunists] would find the cartridge‐cases made in their country they would be embarrassed and kept silence about their findings.

The German ammunition used for shooting the Polish officers made a mockery of the whole Katyń propaganda. That is why Goebbels decided to conceal this most essential material evidence.

He wrote: ‘In any case it is essential that the incident remain a top secret’. (The fact that the order was fulfilled proved that Stalin was right in his suspicions that the representatives of the Polish Red Cross were not free in their action in the [Third Reich’s] sponsored farce of the ‘investigation’ of the Katyń murders.) At the same time Goebbels made a logically correct assumption: ‘If it were to come to the knowledge of the enemy the whole Katyń affair would have to be dropped’.

But years afterwards the six experts of Yeltsin régime decided to rescue Goebbels’ slanderous version. In their ‘conclusion’ they asserted that the Polish officers ‘were shot in a cellar, one by one from a German pistol “Walter”’. The experts did not dare to claim that all NKVD employees were armed with German pistols. But it means that thousands of Polish officers were shot by a single ‘Walter’, one by one. That mysterious ‘Walter’ was never found.

The desire of the six experts to save Goebbels’ lie is obvious. But they were misled by their habit of using anti‐Soviet stereotypes. From a mass of anti‐Soviet books they learned that the NKVD executions always took place in cellars. Therefore the experts did not even bother to read from the documents related to the case that the German cartridge‐cases were found in Katyń graves. It is clear that they dropped to the ground while the executions went on.

Otherwise one should suppose that the cartridge‐cases were swept from the floor of the cellar, carted to the Katyń forest and solemnly buried there with the bodies.

(Emphasis added.)

The decision to remember the conspiracy theory that the Soviets committed this atrocity is very much a political decision, not a logical one. It serves two purposes: anticommunism and Russophobia, both of which are still of use to the Western upper classes. That is why most anticommunists familiar with this atrocity are much less likely to be familiar with the fact that the Fascists exterminated millions of Poles in a settler‐colonial project inspired by earlier ones in North America and elsewhere.

For example, it was in the Pomeranian province that the Fascists exterminated at least 30,000 Polish civilians from October to November in 1939 alone, yet politically it is of very little use to the ruling class, so anticommunists choose to forget it. Tell me, how often, exactly, have you heard anybody discuss this slaughter? Can you name even one example…?

Which part of nazi propaganda? About facts, that Nazis and Soviets had agreement in Ribbentrop-Molotov pack, and this was not only about non-aggression but also about attacking together Poland, and splitting it between both sides?

The idea that the soviets were behind the Katyn massacre, soviet genocide against Poland, and the idea that the soviets and Nazis agreed to attack Poland and split it together are all Nazi propaganda, yes. It's unsurprising that the current far-right Polish government is performing Nazi apologia and anti-communist mythmaking. I also already explained the forgeries.

[+] Pajonk@szmer.info -1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 month ago

Simply saying "fact" doesn't make it so. If you actually read the Secret Protocol of Molotov-Ribbentrop, it speaks of spheres of influence, not territories to invade, which meant that if Nazi Germany invaded beyond the spheres agreed to then the agreement would be nullified. It was a measure to contain Nazi Germany and slow their assault, not an agreement to conquer all of Europe and split it up. There are no plans to invade anywhere mentioned in the Secret Protocol.

Ok, so you’re not answering to any facts or arguments. One again. How it was possible, that people arrested by soviets, thousands of them, and held somewhere on the territory occupied by soviets, were captured by nazis, nazis build camps for them on the territory under soviet occupation, killed them, and prepared mass graves, while the territory was stil under soviet control?

I am answering them, and you're dodging why you agree with Goebbels. The Nazis claimed the soviets killed the officers in 1940, but the bullets in the mass grave were German and dated at 1941, confirmed by the Polish Red Cross. The Nazis had many such mass graves.

Further, Poland is more far-right than the Russian Federation right now, venerates Nazis (as you yourself are doing right now by doing Nazi apologia), and is vehemontly anti-communist. Russia may be governed by right-wing nationalists, but at least it isn't upholding Nazis. Poland is one of the most bloodthirsty NATO members.

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