Not sure that was wise, but the Russians eventually pushed the Germans all the way back to Berlin WITH American industrial might behind them.
That's how it was done. Without us providing them the "stuff" they were all going to be dead.
BTW, I doubt anyone in the USA thought of Stalin as a warm and cuddly guy. The New York Times officially disbelieved his wet work in Ukraine. On the other hand the Ukrainians quickly discovered Nazis couldn't be trusted.
BTW, I'm not without personal information about how the Germans raised troops in the Baltic states ~ wasn't all that much friendship in that, but they offered "pro pay" for guys who would volunteer for the SS (as distinct from just being stuck in the regular German army).
Some took if. Some didn't.
Again, there's not a single thing the Germans did in WWII that was honorable.
“Not sure that was wise, but the Russians eventually pushed the Germans all the way back to Berlin WITH American industrial might behind them.”
I’m sure the Chinese, Vietnamese, Burmese, Koreans, and Philippinos take great comfort in the Soviet accomplishments on the Eastern Front. Stalin’s inactivity in the Far East cost them millions of lives.
The Baltic states fought for the Axis out of fear of Stalin. Being barely twenty years old themselves, and carved from Tsarist Russian territory, the Winter War (in which no Western allies helped Finland) showed them what was in store for them. Imagine the message sent to Eastern Europe when the US allied itself with Stalin; European countries saw what Stalin’s henchmen had done in Spain in 1936 - 1939, killing a dozen bishops and thousands of priests. They had no illusions as to what they were facing; the Axis had no problem attracting whole nations to their cause (without invading them). Look at the ethnic makeup of the Axis army that surrendered in Stalingrad; a lot of Italian & Romanian troops in there.
The Germans didn’t conscript foreigners into their army; they were allowed to join the SS (not forced), where they could fight alongside Germans who were too young for the German army (the German army had dibs on military-age Germans). Even France had volunteers for SS units.
The ugly truth is that what you refer to as “Germany” was in fact “the Axis”. Many people in Europe preferred Nazism to Bolshevism, and the idea that Germany forced all of these people to do bad things is absurd; they were acting in their own perceived self-interests.
A pretty significant percentage of people in the Baltic were ethnic Germans and spoke German as their 1st language. In 1941 as the Nazis were on a roll, it probably did not take a hard sell to sign them up in the German army.