Is it true that Stalin allied with Hitler ?

Is it true that Stalin allied with Hitler they did sign a Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact right or correct was this even an alliance did Stalin have a good reason to sign this also Stalin did fight and defeat Hitler right ?



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2 ... ntrop_Pact

This has been brought up many times. There was no formal alliance. Molotov-Ribbentrop was a Non-Aggression Treaty, which means exactly that they won't fight each other. It contained provisions wherein both sides were informed that the other was to move into parts of Eastern Europe and delineated how far each army could move , so as to avoid conflicts between the two sides. No matter how much anti-communists like to spin it as an alliance of "totalitarianism" it was hardly an alliance, as both sides knew full well that they would be going to war with each other, and this was simply a measure taken by both sides to avoid war in the immediate future, and which Stalin hoped would give the USSR more time to prepare. He was sadly mistaken, because less than 2 years after the treaty, Nazi Germany launched Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union.

While it was understandable why it was done, the way it was done was not exactly a smart move. It tarnished the USSR's reputation and lulled them into a sense of security, which made Stalin think that the Germans would not be attacking when they did.

The Non Aggression Pact was just that - a non-aggression pact. No alliance of mutual defence pact or anything. The USSR was the last European power to sign a non-aggression pact with the Germans. The French, British and even the Polish had non-aggression treaties with the nazis, if the USSR hadn't signed one, they would probably have bee invaded in 1939 or 1940 already.
The USSR massively expanded its military arsenal in the two years of the Pact, thus making possible the eventuel repelling of the nazi invasion. The pact was necessary because the Reich and the USSR were almost at war in 1938, when the USSR wanted to sign a pact with the Western countries in defence of Czechoslovakia. When the West decided to back off and allow the nazis to occupy Czechoslovakia, the USSR had to find a way to ensure the nazis wouldn't invade... yet. They just needed to buy more time, and they did. Also bear in mind that the "Polish" territories occupied by the Soviets as a result of the Pact were for the biggest parts Belarussian and Ukrainian territories conquered by the Polish in the Polish-Soviet War of 1920.

Even though it was only a non-aggression pact it still delegated spheres of influence to both parties.

Political Interest wrote:

Even though it was only a non-aggression pact it still delegated spheres of influence to both parties.

Mostly it returned territoried occupied by the Poles back Soviet hands in return for the Soviet promise not to attack Germany in the case of an occupation of the Polish heartland.

What about Baltic states? If the Soviets had not invaded those regions I think you will find that there would be less animosity between Balts and Slavs today. Stalin should not have pressed for full integration but instead just stationed soldiers there, as was the case with the Soviet-Lithuanian mutual defense agreement which stationed twenty five thousand Soviet soldiers in the republic. If Stalin had just kept the soldiers there and used the Baltics as a base to later fight Germany the USSR would be able to claim itself defender of the Baltics. The states may even have voluntarily aligned themselves with Moscow after that.

The Baltic states were ceded by the Bolsheviks to the German Empire in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in exchange for a cessation of hostilites in the First World War. A few months later the German Empire renounced the treaty, which means that the Baltic states legally returned to being rightful territory of the Soviets. When the USSR "invaded" in 1940 it was merely extending its administration over its territory. The Baltic states were not legal states, but basically breakaway regions the Union was, for various reason, unable to extend its authority over until 1940.

Fair enough, there is no doubt that there may have been some legal right for the Soviets to occupy the Baltic states in the sense of an agreement between Germany and the USSR. However, does anyone consider the historic existence of an independent Baltic entity? The history of an independent Baltic extends long before they were integrated into the Soviet Union or any other empires. Remember the Lithuanian states which were in union with Belarus, Poland and Ukraine.

While it may be popular to portray the Baltics as simply regions which have always belonged to empires, this is simply not the case. They have for long parts of their history comprised an independent entity.

Stalin looked to france,england, or the united states as allies against germany's futur aggression, It was written in plain words that in hitler's view germany had to expand to the east. When all negociation with the other europeans nation failed, stalin turned to hitler as an ally.

In my opinion, it was a tragic thing to see Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia fight each other. This big clash of ideological titans left the banksters who rule us unscathed. the view of the nazi's on race blurred all possibility for humanity to be free from the bankster octopus.

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When all negociation with the other europeans nation failed, stalin turned to hitler as an ally.

No, it was not an alliance. When Stalin's negotiations with the West failed, Stalin signed a non-aggression pact with Hitler. Agreeing not to fight with another party doesn't make you friends.

The tragedy isn't that the Soviet Union fought Nazi Germany; the real tragedy is that after the war, the Soviet Union was not invited to participate in Operation Safehaven in 1946, which was the Allied post-war initiative to trace Nazi assets. If the USSR had been involved, they could have then exposed how much the global banking establishment financed and supported the Nazi administration.

The true collaboration with Hitler began with the Soviet trade with Nazi Germany, right after the Phoney War period ended. Before then, the Non-Aggression Pact itself per se was quite valid after being rejected by Western diplomacy.

Everyone here is forgetting, though, the trade between the Soviets and the Nazis after the Phoney War. While the pact itself should be defended against demonizations, the aforementioned trade should be condemned unequivocally.

Jacob Richter wrote:

Everyone here is forgetting, though, the trade between the Soviets and the Nazis after the Phoney War. While the pact itself should be defended against demonizations, the aforementioned trade should be condemned unequivocally.

After the Fascists came to power, in Italy, they wanted to have trade agreements with the Soviet Union, which Lenin's government agreed to. Why can't we just respect that Bourgeois states are pretty equal when it comes to foreign policy. It was equally 'wrong' for the Soviets to trade with the British, who were butchering their client colonies, as the Germans, who had done relatively little compared to the Brits by that time.

Wakizashi the Bolshevik wrote:

The French, British and even the Polish had non-aggression treaties with the nazis, if the USSR hadn't signed one, they would probably have bee invaded in 1939 or 1940 already.

Really? What were those pacts called? I've never heard that before

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German%E2% ... ssion_Pact

KurtFF8 wrote:

Really? What were those pacts called? I've never heard that before

The British and Germans had a Naval Pact from 1935, while the Poles and Germans had a non-aggression pact from 1934.

I don't know about the French though. Didn't they join the Popular Front with the USSR, Spain, and Czechoslovakia?

Well, a good Clintonian defence here would be that it depends on what your definition of "alliance" is. Usually the people who insist that Stalin and Hitler formed an Official Evil Alliance of Evil Stuff (TM) with the pact are the same people who insist that Finland was just a "co-belligerent" of Hitler's later on, so these definition games start getting less interesting every time they occur.

As noted above, interwar diplomacy was pretty complicated, and there were loads of different treaties between countries (although they generally didn't have the kind of secret protocols that the M-R Pact had). Some of them were, of course, little more than scraps of paper in practice. France and the USSR had a treaty in 1935, but it never amounted to much. France also supported the "Little Entente" between Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia as a deterrent against Germany, Austria and/or Hungary, but that was also made irrelevant eventually.

There was also the Stresa Front of Italy, France and Britain in 1935, which was aimed at guaranteeing the independence of Austria. That broke down due to the Anglo-German Naval Agreement and the Italian invasion of Abyssinia. The Italians started moving towards Germany more after that, and neither the British nor the French were really interested in going to war over Austria, especially once it turned out that most Austrians wanted the Anschluss to happen. After that, of course, we have the famous Munich Agreement, and later the coup in all of Czechoslovakia, etc., which everyone knows about anyway.

What I often notice is that there is a lot of history on Munich, on Appeasement, etc., and the historical debate around it seems quite lively. A search on Wikipedia shows this debate in all its facets: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neville_Ch ... ean_Policy Is there anything like that on the M-R Pact? I mean, I've read (and often quoted here) some very informative works by communist authors, but anything more general? Or does everyone just accept that it was some natural alliance between "twin dictators" that was bound to fail eventually?

One thing that bugs me about the Pact is that it was made at the time when the Allies had already given their guarantee for Poland, and they made it clear in no uncertain terms that any attack on Poland meant war. Without the "green light" represented by the Pact, would the Germans have taken the risk?

No 14 wrote:

One thing that bugs me about the Pact is that it was made at the time when the Allies had already given their guarantee for Poland, and they made it clear in no uncertain terms that any attack on Poland meant war. Without the "green light" represented by the Pact, would the Germans have taken the risk?

Were the Brits and French not trying to start a war between the Soviet Union and Germany? As geography dictated, Poland would have been in their way. Based on what I've read, Polish-German relations were relatively warm before the war, as they made a non-aggression pact in 1934 whilst Poland took part in the carving up of Czechoslovakia in 1938(then a Soviet ally- albeit not a very strong alliance).

So it is hard to say what would have happen. If there was in fact a war between the Soviet Union and Germany, I doubt Poland would have been against granting transit rights to Germany(thus making the Soviets have to go to war with both Poland and Germany and perhaps even other imperial powers).

And honestly, how was the pact even made relevant? The Soviets only moved their soldiers into Western Belarus and Ukraine after the Polish government fled to Rumania, and I doubt the Germans thought the Soviets were going to directly declare war on Poland in the first place.

I think the Soviets did indeed believe that the western Allies intended for Germany and the USSR to throw themselves at each other. The whole story of Appeasement certainly gave reasons for such suspicions; but it's not like the Allies had the monopoly on that. All of 1938-1939 could be seen as the Brits and Soviets trying to pass the buck to each other. Thankfully, the Soviets played the game just a little bit smarter (or rather, after the fall of France, none of the Allies could afford to frag around anymore), but it was certainly hair-raising stuff, not for the faint of heart by any means.

The takeover of the rest of Czechoslovakia, and the subsequent guarantee of Poland given by the Brits should be considered, though. Regardless of any doubts about the sincerity of the Brits, I would very much doubt that Germany could have either gone to war in the west without dealing with Poland, or going to war against Poland without the backing of either the west or the historical M-R Pact. The spectre of a two-front war didn't make anyone in Germany happy.

I also strongly doubt that Poland would have allowed German troops on their soil, just like they wouldn't allow Soviet troops in even when their existence was at risk. But you do touch on an important point here: that foreign relations of Poland were shaped by guys like Józef Beck; Poland was complicit in the dismantling of Czechoslovakia, supported Hungarian territorial ambitions on Slovakia, insisted on keeping Danzig while simultaneously refusing to discuss the possibility of allowing Soviet troops in, etc. That's certainly interesting to remember the next time people go on about those brave Poles. They were certainly brave, but they also helped create exactly the scenario that they wanted to avoid due to trying to be both anti-German and anti-Soviet at the same time, when only the Germans originally sought to wipe them off the map. So I think that does partly explain the Pact.

Another thing about German-Soviet relations was the total dependence of Germany on Soviet imports, which is less easy to explain away. When Germany started the war, their economy was already going up shit creek, but none of the German conquests pre-Barbarossa would have been possible without Soviet trade. That is quite a heavy price to pay for time and pushing the Germans west; it worked a little bit too well. Of course, if you had told the Soviets at the time that Germany was going to smash the French within two months, they would have laughed at you, so maybe it's not so strange. In any case, this is what I'm referring to when I say that the Soviets and the Brits tried to pass the buck to each other.

It was also in this period, especially in late 1940, after the fall of France, that the possibility of an actual alliance between Germany and the USSR was closest. There were some quite serious talks about the Soviets joining the Axis in exchange for control of the Bosporus and a Soviet move into southern Asia. But this never really materialised. I think Stalin later claimed (in Falsifiers of History) that it was all just a big exercise of probing.

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Another thing about German-Soviet relations was the total dependence of Germany on Soviet imports, which is less easy to explain away. When Germany started the war, their economy was already going up shit creek, but none of the German conquests pre-Barbarossa would have been possible without Soviet trade.

I would really like to see evidence for this. Thanks.
I doubt that was the case. How come Germany managed to increase its war prodution several times in the next few years of the war?