There was moral clarity in West and South Europe. But if you happened to be in East Europe, WW2 was primarily a war between nazism and communism. Everyone else was trying to find the least bad option, which usually meant choosing a side and switching it at least once.
> ... in the event of any action which clearly threatened Polish independence, and which the Polish Government accordingly considered it vital to resist with their national forces, His Majesty's Government would feel themselves bound at once to lend the Polish Government all support in their power.
That is unambiguous and clear. They kept their word.
It is tragic in the end that after the war they handed Poland over to Stalin. Poland still had its independence threatened but after having supplied and helped Stalin all that time, it was awkward having to declare war against him as well.
That’s fair. It sort of like on “paper” they fulfilled their obligation, shot a few rounds and quickly ran away. And like we mentioned even in the end they gave Poland over to Stalin. So they won the war, but officially the reason they got into it was not redressed. Not until the Soviet Union fell, years later.
That’s true. Abandoning the Czechs was embarrassing. That was probably a factor in then choosing to at least do the right thing for Poland. Otherwise it started to look really embarrassing for them: here are these great powers and they do not keep their word. That looked very weak.
The political situation in the 1930s was thoroughly messed up. Britain and France may have had mainly good intentions, but their policies did not prevent the disasters.
Great Britain should have made a pact with the Soviet Union against Hitler much earlier.
Poland was in an extremely difficult situation. But the decision to invade Czechoslovakia with the Germans was certainly not a good idea.
> Britain and France may have had mainly good intentions, but their policies did not prevent the disasters.
They had an absolute lack of appetite for fighting since the WWI was not long ago. I don't know if the Germans were smart enough to understand that and fully took advantage of it or were just lucky. For the Germans it worked with Czechoslovakia so they figured it would work with Poland as well.
Stalin I think is more interesting. He was prepared to "defend" the Czechs as well. He just needed permission to take his armies across Poland and Romania. He quickly switched sides after the agreement and signed the Soviet-German agreement.
> In 1925, a flying school was established near Lipetsk (Lipetsk fighter-pilot school) to train the first pilots for the future Luftwaffe
Reading that it's like reading some alternative universe fan-fiction. So that makes Stalin's position interesting. He was supposed to be allied with the French and the British officially but non-officially was assisting the Germans.
"Having tried and failed to negotiate a suitable
treaty of alliance with the British and French, and fearing an
Anglo-French design of involving them in a war with Germany
which they would have to fight alone, the Soviets turned to a deal
with Hitler."
"The Soviet Union and the Origins of the Second World War"
Russo-German Relations and
the Road to War, 1933-1941
> But if you happened to be in East Europe, WW2 was primarily a war between nazism and communism.
WWII in Eastern Europe was a war for the survival of the Slavic peoples whom the Nazis declared to be the Untermensch[0] (Belorussians, Czechs, Poles, Russians, Serbs, Ukrainians – all of them) and were determined to fully exterminate them all following the extermination of the Jews and the Roma people.
The scale of extermination of the Slavs went far beyond the mass murdering of them in concentration camps, and included rounding up villages and burning them along with the villagers down with the use of flamethrowers, with no remorse because the Nazis considered the Slavs sub-humans[1][2][3][4].
Neither Czechoslovakia, nor Poland, nor the Kingdom of Yugoslavia had communism of any shape or flavour.
How do Romania, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland fit in that picture?
WW2 was a complex war. The big picture for the European part was that the two main powers divided Europe in their spheres of influence, fully intending to fight each other for overall supremacy after a while. Some countries joined their designated side voluntarily, some joined under a threat of invasion, and most of the rest were invaded. The ones I listed were the ones where the USSR was the initial aggressor.
Instead of shifting the goalposts, please do yourself a favour and read up on the Untermenschen and the convoluted hierarchy of the sub-humans in the Nazi racial ideology. As an example, since the Nazis harboured particular hatred towards the Poles, the Poles were at the very bottom of the hierarchy, and only complete obliteration of the Polish ethnicity was deemed acceptable.
One joins an alliance of convenience, sometimes in very unfavourable circumstances, to avoid the worst – the demise of one's own people and to guarantee their survival. Making a deal with the devil is a well-known adage that aptly describes such an unfortunate event.
Nazis considered the Finns (and the Estonians by extension) to be racially pure, with Latvians and Lithuanians being somewhere in between either redeemable or tolerable (frankly, I can't recall the exact details).
> WW2 was a complex war.
WWII was no more complex than the WWI, and it had a single, overarching objective – the repartitioning of the world. The main difference between the two was that the WWII was infused with a vile racial ideology, used to justify the pursuit of Lebensraum and the total annihilation of peoples whom the Nazi Party targeted with hatred, based on their crackpot so-called racial studies.
A clear view of WW II in all its complexity is important. The current tense geopolitical context makes that even more so. Have you noticed how the current head war criminal in Moscow is glorifying his WW II predecessor?
Moreover, Germans decided that Slavs are untermensch because of Holodomor henocide of Ukrainians ([Little] Russians) by Russians (Great Russians). The confusion between [Little] Russians (now Ukrainians) and Great Russians (now Russians) caused Germans to think that Russians performed genocide of their own nation, killed millions of their own mothers and children, which is biggest sin in Germany (and many other nations).
> Ukrainian nationalists had also joined the Nazis.
This occurred in all occupied territories didn’t it? France, Holland, Belgium etc.
It also occurred in some that weren’t occupied. Spain for example, and don’t look too hard at the British Royal Family (for this reason and various others).
"This separatism at certain moments reached extremes that no one could forget, particularly not the Russian people, knowing that the vast mass of the Nazi-armed and organised armies coming from Russian territory were Ukrainian. The Vlasov army was a Ukrainian army. Today we can even read the history of Ukrainians turning entire villages to blood and fire, including French ones. A good part of the repression of the maquis in central France was carried out by Ukrainians. "
"He (Himmler) oversaw the creation of the SS-Volunteer Division "Galicia" in October 1943 from Ukrainian volunteers, but that same month he said that Vlasov made him "genuinely anxious."
I don't know if the eastern european countries besides maybe ussr count. Many many polish, ukrainian and lithuanians enthusiastically helped the germans in carrying out the holocaust.
On 02.04.2008, Russian State Duma confirmed that 7 million (adults and unknown number of children) died because of artificial starvation in 1932-1934 (Holodomor). Majority of them are Ukrainians. However, Russian Federation refuses to confirm the starvation and FSB agents jail or kill everybody who spreads information about Holodomor. If you are from RF - beware.
Not even close so don't try. There were some powerful positions in the ussr occupied by jews. I'm not sure what role they had in the purges etc. Stalin was definitely not a great lover of jews.
On the other hand in the countries i mentioned above many locals participated in a genocide and murdered their neighbors with their bare hands.
