[Tailgunner Joe]

Some Soviet apologists actually try to defend the Hitler-Stalin pact by saying that Stalin was forced to side with Hitler by the appeasers Chamberlain and Daladier.

This historical revision completely ignores the fact that the Marxist Stalin was dedicated to the Communist conquest of western Europe from the very beginning.

What, no chair for me? (30th September, 1938)

At the end of the First World War, Poland was reborn as a nation-state out of the collapsed German, Austrian, and Russian Empires. At the peace conference at Versailles, Britain and France had demarcated the eastern border of Poland, and this became known as the Curzon Line. But in 1919, a war broke out between Poland and the new Bolshevik regime in Russia. At first the Poles advanced far into Russia, but the Bolsheviks counterattacked and reached the gates of Warsaw. The Poles then mounted their own successful counteroffensive and pushed the Red Army back, far to the east of the Curzon Line. The battle line became the political frontier when a peace treaty was signed between Poland and Lenin's Bolshevik regime in March 1921.

When Stalin and Hitler divided Poland in 1939, once again erasing it from the map of Europe, the line separating Soviet and Nazi zones of occupation was partly along and partly to the west of the Curzon Line. Stalin insisted throughout his wartime meetings with Churchill and Roosevelt that the Curzon Line was to be the border between Poland and the Soviet Union, not the older frontier according to the peace treaty of 1921.

In this shifting frontier of political control between Poland and the U.S.S.R., no consideration was ever given to the preferences or desires of those living in these lands. But one thing is certain, life for those who fell under Stalin's care in eastern Poland after 1939 was far from idyllic. It is quite doubtful that Roosevelt was right when he claimed that the people in these areas wanted to be part of the Soviet Union. Peasant land was seized, with the peasants forced into collective farms. All private property was nationalized. Tens of thousands of people were executed or sent off into slave labor in the Gulag prison camps. And in a region in which most of the people were either Russian Orthodox or Roman Catholic, religion was abolished and made a punishable offense.

When Adolf Hitler's foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, came to Moscow on August 23, 1939, to sign the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, Joseph Stalin hosted a late-night supper for his German guests after the signatures had been affixed to the documents. Stalin rose from his chair and gave a toast to Hitler: ". . . a man for whom [I have] always had an extraordinary respect. . . . I know how much the German nation loves its Führer; I should therefore like to drink to his health."

[Tailgunner Joe]

ping

[wyattearp]

I highly recommend the book "Icebreaker", which is mentioned in the article. It details the treachery of Stalin, who was just weeks away from attacking Hitler when Hitler attacked Russia first. It is an outstanding read. Not something that you read about in history class, for some reason...

[anonymoussierra]

Very good Thank you

http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/timeline/ww2time.htm
http://www.euronet.nl/users/wilfried/ww2/ww2.htm
http://www.ibiblio.org/pha
http://www.elknet.pl/acestory/poland.htm
http://www.cyberroad.com/poland/jews_ww2.html
http://www.bellaonline.com/subjects/7315.asp
http://www.cassiopaea.org/cass/coming2.htm
http://www.wargaming.net/tanks/poland.htm
http://www.polandsholocaust.org/intro.html

Please read Thank you all

[Milhous]

The strategy was to deflect any attack against the Soviet Union, and instead allow the capitalist nations to fight each other to exhaustion, at which point the Soviet Army would enter the war and conquer the European continent for the Communist cause.

Ironically, before invading Normandy, the Allies waited for Germany and the Soviet Union to fight each other to exhaustion at Stalingrad.

[Lukasz]

When Stalin and Hitler divided Poland in 1939, once again erasing it from the map of Europe, the line separating Soviet and Nazi zones of occupation was partly along and partly to the west of the Curzon Line. Stalin insisted throughout his wartime meetings with Churchill and Roosevelt that the Curzon Line was to be the border between Poland and the Soviet Union, not the older frontier according to the peace treaty of 1921.

It was even worse, according to the illegal Curzon Line, city of Lvov, populated by vast majority of Poles, was on the Polish side but Stalin seeing FDR’s and Churchill’s completely passive behavior took even Lvov and ignored own proposition of the Curzon line.

[SamAdams76]

If only Patton was allowed to do things his way.

[Askel5]

good catch, Joe.

[RusIvan]

This historical revision completely ignores the fact that the Marxist Stalin was dedicated to the Communist conquest of western Europe from the very beginning. ==

Accually it was Trotskii who propagated idea to dominate all Europe and whole world. Stalin and his cronies was enemies of Trotskii. They wanted to build socialism in one country - Soviet Union.