The Spanish Civil War is a pretty clear illustration of where things stood in the years leading up to WWII. The Soviets were supplying arms and ‘volunteers’ to the Republicans, and Nazi Germany provided arms and ‘volunteers’ to the Nationalists. Neither nation openly joined the conflict, but the battle lines for WWII were clearly drawn.
Negotiations leading to the non-aggression pact started immediately after the Nationalists (Fascists) defeated the Republicans (including Communists) in Spain. Another point of context which might help explain Stalin’s sudden change of position is that the Soviets were also engaged in some fairly heavy fighting against the Japanese at that time.
There are plenty of references in texts from that time to the shock and disappointment of communists around the world at the signature of the non-aggression pact, so it’s safe to assume that until that time the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were perceived as hostile to one another.
Do you have a cite for this ? As I understand it, German armaments were considerably more advanced than Soviet (ref Spanish Civil War).
Good point - apparently neutral, in this case, is closer in meaning to non-aligned than to non-belligerent.
Bit complicated to give a single response for this, as things varied considerably depending on what weapon system you are looking at, and changed over fairly short timeframes. It’s probably fairer to say that both the Soviets and the Nazis had some great weapons systems that were as good or better than anything else around, and some obsolete, poorly designed junk. In general the Germans were more tactically sophisticated and used their weapons better, but the Soviets didn’t have any particular reason to be embarrassed about their gear. For instance the BT-5s they deployed to Spain were much better than the primitive tanks the Fascists had. The Polikarpov monoplanes outclassed the Heinkel and Fiat biplanes, but were inferior to the Bf109, which was eventually outclassed by newer Russian fighters later in the war, and so on.
As regards the Soviets supplying the Germans with weapons, I don’t recall coming across any examples of that - my understanding was that the Soviets supplied the Germans mainly with raw materials. However it’s worth noting that they did have joint flight schools and tank schools on Soviet territory where a lot of German personnel were trained in the early days of rearmament.
To respond to the OP, war maps generally show countries as ‘Neutral’ up to the point where they get involved in fighting - otherwise historians would have to spend their lives coming up with different shadings to indicate who liked who, and then arguing about what colour each country should be. If they are having their own private war, it’s ignored as not relevant.
The Soviet invasion of the Baltic states had nothing to do with WW2 until it rolled right over the top of them and they found the Estonian-Soviet war had been swallowed up in the German-Soviet war that was one part of WW2.
I was aware that the Soviets were nervous of a replay of 1905, but have never heard of anything after that.
Would this be skirmishes on the Korean border ?
I’m aware that one of the reasons for the succesful defence of Moscow was pulling forward of Siberian based troops.
@DiosaBellissima
I’m pretty sure that Stalin was well aware of Hitler’s real objective, essentially the restoration of the Prussian Empire and then quite a bit more.
Sort of, but a bit large to be skirmishes. 80,000+ troops involved over a period of four months, tens of thousands of people killed.
Look here for more detail.
The soviets and a bunch of other folks… often it was the Communist sympathizers of those other folks, though. I understand the Lincoln brigade wasn’t exactly welcome with open arms in the US. George Orwell served in the Republican army; the brutality he witnessed prompted “Rebellion in the Farm”. Diosa asked whether the USSR traded with the Allies as much as with Germany. Apart from the logistic points mentioned by Captain Amazing, many countries viewed the USSR with… distaste, to put it mildly. While trading with “those damn commies” wouldn’t be forbidden in many of those countries, any capitalist would likely have preferred to take his business anywhere else when possible.
I had the same reaction the first time I came across it. It hardly ever gets mentioned and it was not only a large conflict but also extremely important in terms of its impact on Japanese and Soviet behaviour later on.
There wasn’t a “Prussian Empire”…there was a Kingdom of Prussia, and then the Kingdom of Prussia, through a bunch of wars and political machinations, managed to gain dominance over the rest of the German states and established the “Empire of Germany”, in which the King of Prussia became German Emperor.
I think that what FRDE was referring to was that a lot of Hitler’s moves were in the furtherance of regaining land that Germany lost after World War I.
I thought Stalin had quite a good reason to trust Hitler- there had been a rather disatrous war for the Germans, oh, about 20 years before WW2, that turned out disastrous precisely because it was fought on two fronts.
Apparently, although the 3rd Reich would eventually require expansion into Russia, at the beginning the Nazis would have done almost anything to avoid fighting a war on two fronts, including signing a Treaty with Stalin.
It was my understanding that Prussia included what had been western Poland before Poland was dismembered in the 18th century between Prussia, Russia and Austria.
Courtesy of Wikipedia, here are maps of Prussia in 1795, in 1871, when the German Empire was formed, also showing the other German states, and a map of Germany during WWI, after the treaty of Versailles, and Germany today
Not really. The Germans were quite successful on the Eastern Front in WW I. They rather resoundingly defeated Russia, which was pulled completely out of the war by an armistice in late 1917 after the Bolsheviks took over, leaving Germany in control of a great deal of formerly Russian territory. This freed up a lot of German troops for the Western Front.
