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Comment by Roark66 | Hacker News Reader

You lost me with this "Similarly, on World War II’s Eastern Front, the Soviet Union absorbed the catastrophic brunt of defeating Nazi Germany, losing 27 million soldiers and civilians (Ellman & Maksudov, 1994; Harrison, 2003). Yet modern Western consciousness treats that sacrifice as an awkward footnote, replacing it with Hollywood GIs storming Normandy."

You know what Western Consciousness lacks? A clear information Soviet Union is directly responsible for starting WW2 by attacking Poland (my country) in concert with Hitler.

There would be no WW2 if not for Ribbentrop-Molotov pact.

Soviets indeed helped fight Hitler once he switched from being an ally to an enemy. If he didn't choose to attack them it would've never happened.

Furthermore they enslaved the countries they came to "liberate" for 50 years and hunted the remainder of our army till 1960s. So forgive me if I do not consider them worthy of any praise whatsoever.

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> There would be no WW2 if not for Ribbentrop-Molotov pact.

I was taght in school that the reparations the Germany had to pay to the winers of WW1 were the cause of WW2.

Proof: Marshall plan after WW2.

> I was taght in school that the reparations the Germany had to pay to the winers of WW1 were the cause of WW2.

German here. It's partially true, partially wrong. The NSDAP jumped from 2.6% (barely relevant) in 1928 to 18.3% in 1930 [1]. The cause for this is widely assumed to be the 1929 Great Depression leading to an ever growing number of unemployed people that together with the reparations issue made it ever more difficult to pass a budget bill [2].

(Side tangent... it's not surprising we've seen a revival and subsequent surge of the far-right ever since the 2007ff financial crisis.)

> Proof: Marshall plan after WW2.

The Marshall Plan came to be after the Western Allied Powers realized that they shared a somewhat similar worldview but the Soviet Union did not, and that Germany might be needed as a "buffer zone" should the Western-Soviet relations completely collapse.

Up until then... the plans for Germany that circulated were much different, getting to as radical as proposing to completely "salt the earth" aka Morgenthau plan [3].

[1] https://www.bundestag.de/resource/blob/190456/reichstagswahl...

[2] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabinett_M%C3%BCller_II

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgenthau_Plan

I saw a Reader's Digest from wartime that proposed stripping Germany of industry and make it a rural agrarian economy.

The USSR did its part, stripping out select industries and moving them to Mother Russia.

Hey man, what was Poland up to prior to WW2? Why would the Soviets want to attack them?

Well, Russia was attacking Poland as a sort of tradition since forever. Well before it became Soviet.

But Soviets specifically had a reason. 20 years before WW2 they tried to "bring their revolution" West with force and they got their asses kicked properly in the main battle near Warsaw.

This was named "Miracle on the Vistula", because as it often happens with Russia they had numbers of people that should make it hopeless for the Polish.

Prior to that, not Soviet, but Tzarist Russia occupied Poland for over a hundred years splitting the country between itself, Germany and Austro-Hungarian empire. That was their "ideal state" and what they were trying to come back to with Ribbentrop Molotov pact.

In general they have invaded many times in history. Polish took part in an invasion of Russia only once. It wasn't even proper Polish army supported by the state/king, but few thousand mercenaries that contained Lithuanians, Cossacs and others that managed to take over Moscow and set up their own Tzar.

They were thrown out 2 years later. The Tzar was hanged, quartered and shot out from 4 cannons in 4 directions. You can imagine they didn't like the guy. I think the date those mercenaries were thrown out (4th November) is a national holiday in Russia despite happening 400+ years ago.

TLDR/ Russia thinks it's an empire and smaller countries like Poland should be it's pawns. Polish never liked the idea. The end.

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