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Comment by VictorPath | Hacker News Reader

> Stalin foreign policy (not unlike Chamberlains) was to pull Germany to his side

Sort of. Prior to 1933 was the Third Period where the Comintern was antagonistic in Germany even to socialists ("social fascists"). From 1934 to the end of 1938 the USSR was looking for a self-defense pact with France, or the UK, neither country of which was interested (Blum in France was not for complex reasons). In 1939 the USSR and Germany signed a peace treaty, which Germany would break within two years, but it gave the Soviet Union enough time to prepare for invasion. Also Germany having a western front helped the Soviet Union.

Stalin was initially unsupportive of Lenin's plan for a socialist government in Russia in 1917. Then again, neither were most Bolsheviks. Lenin did not have global goals with himself at the center, and Stalin's goals were even more modest. Of course they made the most of whatever foreign good will they had.

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Starting from the Treaty of Rapallo in 1922 there was cooperation between Germany and Soviets. Recent archival research has reviled that this cooperation was far deep then initially assumed. Until a short while ago we mostly looked at diplomatic treaties. However the reality is, German Army was basically operating as a shadow government in Germany and they very intensively interact with Russia on a massive scale.

There certainty were rough patches in the relationship and the didn't like each other, but strategically from 1922 on Russia was mostly supportive of Germany.

And of course Stalin hated the SPD and he thought they were more dangerous then the Rightists. But that doesn't mean that the core relationship was always that Germany had to be support as long as they were aggressive towards the other 'capitalist powers'.

> France, or the UK, neither country of which was interested

They were interested. But the cost of such an agreement was basically to give Stalin power over pretty much all of Eastern and Southern Europe.

And such an agreement would only have been a tool in Stalin attempt to create war between France and Germany that he could stay out off.

The French were very suspicious of Soviet intentions (far more so then they used to be of Imperial Russia) and that is why the French never came even close to such an agreement.

> In 1939 the USSR and Germany signed a peace treaty, which Germany would break within two years, but it gave the Soviet Union enough time to prepare for invasion. Also Germany having a western front helped the Soviet Union.

Yeah sure it helped that Germany spent resources fighting Britain. But not getting invaded by 1.5 million Germans at all would have helped far more.

The reality is, Germany can't invaded Soviet Union without Soviet Union or Britain support. They likely couldn't even have invaded France without Soviet Support. So had Stalin adopted a different strategy, Germany would have never seriously invaded the Soviet Union.

> Lenin did not have global goals with himself at the center

Sure. Until the moment he has the option to be.

> Stalin's goals were even more modest

No they weren't. Both of their goals was global revolution and Soviet Leadership of global communism.

After WW1, the USSR and Germany were kind of the parias of European politics, that made them natural partners of convenience. And as you said, it was Germany that broke that partnership as soon as it did serve them anymore. The Wehrmacht owns a lot of its existence to the secret programs they Reichswehr ran with the Russians when they were still bound by the Versailles treaty limiting the German military.

I came to appreciate the interwar period as being at least as interesting as the two world wars, it is highly complex, wrought with conflict and so formative when it comes to WW2 and even the Cold War. This period is also tremendously under covered, maybe not in the East but absolutely in common German history lessons. But not diving deep into that period, so much context of WW2 is lost.

> The French were very suspicious of Soviet intentions (far more so then they used to be of Imperial Russia) and that is why the French never came even close to such an agreement.

The USSR were also pretty close to signing a treaty with Romania (from where I'm from) in around 1936 if I'm not mistaken, had that happened they would have probably not taken Bessarabia (present-day Republic of Moldova), Northern Bukovina and the county of Herza from us in June 1940. Our Minister of Foreign Affairs at the time, Titulescu, was very against it so unfortunately that didn't happen.

It also didn't help that the Soviets were, for all intents and purposes, a Bolshevik State and were seen by everyone else as a Bolshevik State first and foremost. For all the attacks drawn against the author I think Ernst Nolte's book The European Civil War [1] best describes that mindset, this part of Europe was really divided into Bolshevism vs anti-Bolshevism back at the time.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Nolte#Der_europ%C3%A4isc...

Indeed, it's worth pointing out that the Soviet Union offered to defend Czechoslovakia from Germany in 1938, but other countries opposed this. In general, I get the impression that European powers in the 1930's couldn't make up their mind between countering Germany or countering the Soviet Union.

Evil or Evil? Which do you choose?

Well they didn't just 'offer' that for nothing. This had conditions attached. And would have basically used it to take much of eastern Europe.

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