• Gordon Calhoun@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    The sacrifice and courage of Soviet soldiers in the face of Nazi aggression is profound and worthy of admiration, yes.

    Should be noted that Stalin was a Hitler-enabler and early ally, or at least subtle collaborator, leading up to the onset of the war. The western democracies should have done a better job of building a coalition with Stalin in the thirties, but failed, hoping appeasement and hand-wringing would do the trick instead.

    Soviet soldiers also invaded Finland around that time and were complete assholes there, even if they did get their asses handed to them by a numerically-inferior, but fierce fighting source. It’s sad that most of the slaughter was inflicted upon Ukrainian conscripts who probably didn’t actually give a shit about annexing Finland.

    • Tolc@lemmy.worldOP
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      3 days ago

      Should be noted that Stalin was a Hitler-enabler and early ally, or at least subtle collaborator

      lie, western “democracies” refused to ally with stalin against hitler hoping hitler will destroy communism (he kinda did too).

      And ukrainians are not some divine angels who would think differently from all soviet republics somehow. They were part of the red army and soviets thought shifting the border away from important city like leningrad, I am not defending invasion of finland I think it was a net negative but maybe that invasion saved leningrad afterall.

    • plyth@feddit.org
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      3 days ago

      but failed, hoping appeasement and hand-wringing would do the trick instead.

      I have read that both the USSR and the West had hoped that Germany would fight the other so that they could beat the weakened winner. Is that true?