Thousands of Polish army officers were massacred in the Katyn Forest, and millions of Poles were sent to suffer in the harsh terrain and climate of remote Siberia and Central Asia (Moorhouse). In eastern Poland, the Soviets carried out “mass arrests and deportations, shootings, torture and expropriation” (Evans). Moorhouse also claims that, with this pact, Stalin was ready "to set the world-historical forces of revolution in motion.” The alliance between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union even went so far that Germany provided state-of-the-art military equipment to the Soviet Union in exchange for raw materials such as oil and grain (Moorhouse). The Soviets also invaded Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Finland, and parts of Romania (Evans). They jointly invaded Poland, Germany from the west and Russia from the east, giving the world a taste of what was to come. The pact had secret clauses where they partitioned Poland between the two countries (Evans). Even as Western Communists left the Soviet Communist party in great numbers after the pact, and German Nazis were shocked by the alliance with the Communists they had fought for years (Moorhouse), the pact was mutually beneficial to Stalin and Hitler for nefarious reasons. If Stalin had remained an ally of Hitler and become an Axis power, the result might have been devastating for the Allies and the entire world. The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact directly kickstarted World War II, making the debilitating war as much Stalin’s culpability as Hitler’s. “The sinister news broke upon the world like an explosion,” Churchill wrote (Klein). Still, within just a few hours, an ominous pact was formed between Fascist Germany and the Marxist-Leninist Soviet Union. And now, suddenly, are we to make our people believe that all is forgotten and forgiven? Things don't work that fast” (Evans). Stalin did voice his skepticism when he said, "For many years now, we have been pouring buckets of sh*t on each other's heads, and our propaganda boys could not do enough in that direction. He arranged for German Foreign Minister Ribbentrop to meet with Soviet counterpart Molotov. Meanwhile, Hitler was scrambling for an alliance with Stalin before he invaded Poland so that he would not have a two-front war like Germany did in World War I (Klein). Interestingly, Imperial Japan was an ally of Nazi Germany. The Soviet Union was already engaged in a war with Japan on its eastern front and considered peace with Germany to be an attractive option (Klein). Britain and France agreed to defend Poland if it were ever invaded, but they had done nothing when Germany occupied Czechoslovakia despite its violation of the Munich agreement, making Stalin doubt their resolve (Klein).
Stalin understood Britain was not eager to enter an alliance with Russia because of their distrust of the Communists (Lukacs).
However, after months of negotiation with Britain and France to form an alliance with them against Germany, Russia eventually relented in trying to ally with them and turned instead to an alliance with Germany. Nazi propaganda condemned the Soviet Union, and vice versa. The Fascists and Marxist-Leninists never got along.
The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact formed by emissaries of Hitler and Stalin aided Hitler’s invasion of Poland and Eastern Europe, thereby directly causing World War II. Even though Fascists and Marxists are sworn enemies ideologically, and the Soviet Union is remembered for defeating Nazi Germany, their often overlooked diabolical union in the early days of World War II might have caused one of the most debilitating wars in history. Despite being perpetually paranoid and famously “trusting nobody,” Stalin trusted and admired Hitler (Lukacs). Furthermore, Stalin was a notorious tyrant himself, not that different from Adolf Hitler, or Benito Mussolini, or Hideki Tōjō (Moorhouse). He was dragged into the war by Hitler’s betrayal (Turner). But wasn’t Stalin’s Russia one of the Allied powers fighting against the tyrannical Fascists? How was Stalin an ally of Adolf Hitler? First, Stalin had no noble intentions of destroying tyranny when he joined the fight against the Fascists. That ally turned enemy was Joseph Stalin.
#KICKSTARTED AI WAR 2 SERIES#
How close was the world to being a Fascist-Leninist dystopia if a joint alliance of Hitler, Stalin, and Hideki Tōjō had won World War II? This could have been a consequence if it weren’t for a series of blunders made by Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, including one by Adolf Hitler, when he turned one of his most powerful allies into one of his most fateful enemies.
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