Monday, August 10, 2015

Was the Nazi assault on Poland a betrayal in the secret alliance with Stalin and the Soviet Union?

Not really. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, signed in August 1939, established a non-aggression pact between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. As part of the pact, the two superpowers partitioned Poland between them---the people of Poland didn't want that, but they didn't care; their plan was to invade from both sides, which ultimately they carried out. It was actually because of this pact that Germany was able to invade Poland without resistance from the Soviet Union.

Nazi Germany did eventually try to expand their territory in Poland beyond what they had originally agreed upon, but this was because Hitler explicitly intended to go all the way to invading Moscow. After the USSR was humiliated in Finland, Hitler believed he could actually defeat the USSR even while fighting the UK and other countries; this proved to be a megalomaniacal delusion rather than an accurate assessment of his strategic situation.

Historians still debate to this day whether Stalin knew that Hitler would  ultimate betray him and was biding time to prepare a defense, or if he was actually expecting the pact to hold between the two autocratic superpowers against democratic countries.

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