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Western Betrayal, or how badly did we screw over Eastern Europe?
RMS Oceanic
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As some people in the [Chat] area know, I've spent the last week in Poland. Yeah, I saw stuff like Auschwitz and the Krakow Ghetto and the dying embers of Jewish Culture in the Kazimierez district, which was definately sad and at the same time important, but hat's another story. My guide for Kazimierez talked rather bitterly about the Big Three (Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin) abandoning Poland for their convenience. This underlined the vibe I got after visiting the Museum about the Warsaw Uprising, which was ultimately unsupported by the Allies and resulted in the flattening of the City by the Nazis.
All this has been defined as Western Betrayal, the resentment felt by Eastern European countries, especially Poland and the Czech Republic, that western powers abandoned them in the clash between Facism and Socialism, starting with the Munich Agreement in 1938, which carved off Czechoslovakia's Sutetendland without the Czechs getting a say, and going through France's utter failure to do anything against Germany invading Poland, the afformentioned failure of the Warsaw uprising, deciding to legitimize Soviet territorial gains from the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and letting Stalin set up Communist regimes.
I'm just wondering, while it's clear the west has screwed over Eastern Europe, how much of it was malicious? Was the Munich Agreement a vein attempt to avoid war, or a ploy to buy time so Britain could prepare for war? Would a proper French assault in 1939 have helped Poland out? Did Britain and France promise too much in the first place? Were Britain and America's hands tied by the need for the Soviet Union to end the war quickly? Were they forced to fold to Stalin's demands? Or did the west just not give a shit about what happened east of Germany?
Naturally, I've heard many opinions, but I wondered what you guys thought.
All this has been defined as Western Betrayal, the resentment felt by Eastern European countries, especially Poland and the Czech Republic, that western powers abandoned them in the clash between Facism and Socialism, starting with the Munich Agreement in 1938, which carved off Czechoslovakia's Sutetendland without the Czechs getting a say, and going through France's utter failure to do anything against Germany invading Poland, the afformentioned failure of the Warsaw uprising, deciding to legitimize Soviet territorial gains from the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and letting Stalin set up Communist regimes.
I'm just wondering, while it's clear the west has screwed over Eastern Europe, how much of it was malicious? Was the Munich Agreement a vein attempt to avoid war, or a ploy to buy time so Britain could prepare for war? Would a proper French assault in 1939 have helped Poland out? Did Britain and France promise too much in the first place? Were Britain and America's hands tied by the need for the Soviet Union to end the war quickly? Were they forced to fold to Stalin's demands? Or did the west just not give a shit about what happened east of Germany?
Naturally, I've heard many opinions, but I wondered what you guys thought.
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I think they've got good reasons to be pissed at the so-called "enlightened nations".
So, "the west" cares as much about "the east" as I care about the chair I'm sitting on...It's a good chair and I like to keep it clean, but I'm not going to carry it out if the house burns down.
*By which we mean the US.
Seriously, fuck Poland, we do waaaay too much intervening anyways
Edit: Let me clarify. Recently I have become impassioned about our treatment of Africa, specifically countries such as Kenya, Nigeria, etc. , where we have let civil war, genocide, disease and poverty fester there, and in some cases have caused it (de Beers). I am strongly in support of aid for Africa and nonsupport of de Beers, who really only have the power they have due to a literal monopoly and control of supply of diamonds (well the WDC does but you get my point)
However
I'm not in support of an invasion of African countries to like protect them from the gangs or something
It's like, we have our own goddamn problems. Really does suck to be you guys, we should be providing you massive support (we kind of do, but we could give more) when times are good. Times aren't good right now, so we really can't do that, Africa
But we're not gonna throw like troops in there or something
Also, Poland was a soverign country in WWII. If your literal fucking argument for why you're pissed that you got invaded was was "Well some other country should've saved us"
1: Hahahaha, go fuck yourself, that's how wars work
2: WWI
As for post war, in terms of Germany and the East, that's more likely related to "the west" not wanting to push themselves into another war after having just ended one. Although the US at the end of WWII started to focus on Soviet spheres of influence, I don't think they could foresee the overall conflict that would envelope the next thirty or so years
Man, superpowers should've totally intervened with tiny countries' squabbles
I mean, there is no way that could possibly go wrong
I just need to know whatever narrative we're trying to generate here, and I'll fakepost like a mofo :P
I suppose the best case for western abandonment could be made that from the invasion of Poland to the invasion of France, the UK and France didn't do a whole lot with respect to Germany.
I really don't like Francebashing because I grew up in a household that Francebashed all the time, so I'm inherently wary of it, but what the fuck France in WWII
Really, what the fuck
Again, more likely on the basis that their hands were tied and neither were exactly prepared for what was coming. This in combination with the blitzkrieg tactics used kind of put them into a position that looked like they were very hands off, but was really more of a sudden panic and frantic reeling in of war industries
What the fuck could they do? Germany was fully rearmed and the UK and France, well, weren't.
I'm saying from the Eastern European perspective. They probably couldn't have done anything practically, but it looked like they weren't you know, interested. Until France was attacked.
They should've taken the warning signs vis a vis countries such as Poland, Baltic States, etc and started rearming just in case
It's like if Russia invaded like Puerto Rico or Cuba or Mexico, for us
Edit: That being said I hate arguements like this because it's armchair general-ing at its worst, 60 years removed, and in all honesty I could see all the reasons they didn't treat Germany as a legit threat until France was invaded
Again, I think the speed of things, how quickly and efficiently the Germany army moved, caught everyone by surprise.
I'm definitely in agreement on that one
But it was totally bullshit and absolutely disgusting that the U.S.S.R. got to keep what it had bargained for in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the agreement with Nazi Germany that opened the door for Soviet aggression against Finland, the Baltic states and Poland that did just as much, or likely more, to cause the Second World War as the Munich Agreement. But what could be done in 1945 about Poland and all of the other Eastern states occupied by the Red Army? Nothing.
Since the 1990's the treatment of Eastern Europe has been a mixed bag. EU membership and labour mobility has certainly helped, though France, the UK, etc. begrudge their Eastern neighbours even that much and it's not hard to hear folks whining about "Polish Plumbers" takin' der jerbs.
The west did not commit them and its not certain they had the power to prevent them.
Should the US have sacrificed a million lives for Poland's freedom? Because thats what it would have cost to drive the Soviets out.
And its not like UK/France aproved of Germany's action, its just that 20 years earlier they did try to stop it at horrible cost. People tend to forget that Apeasment was a popular policy at the time. Nobody wanted a Second great war(except Hitler).
The only way to defend Poland from Germany was to allow Russian troops across the border and Poland refused to do so. Hindering an agreement between the UK, France and the USSR.
Yes the west sold them out, but Poland itself has part of the blame for putting itself in that position.
Poland had taken the eastern territory from the USSR after a war in the 1920's. I don't know for sure but I believe that Poles didn't make up a majority population of that land.
I'm sort of on this page. And, having been born in a fascist state, I'm probably a lot more sympathetic to the enforcement of the Warsaw Pact than a lot of people.
Semi-playing devil's advocate, I wonder if the creation of NATO might have actually made the situation worse for Eastern Europe. I mean, beyond the usual 'American Bombers dropping nuclear warheads everywhere in the event of war' scenario. In its declaration of formation, the Warsaw Pact included an addendum stating that, in the event of NATO's dissolution, it too would be dissolved. Obviously, politicians east and west have a tendency to not keeping their word, but I wonder if, had NATO not been formed over the earlier, informal defense agreements through western Europe, if the Soviet insistence on a buffer, and thus, enforcement of their own will, would have remained so stringent into the mid-1950s, and especially into detente.
Of course, without NATO, there exist a possibility (however small or large) that the Red Army would have marched through Europe anyway (especially if, say, Patton hadn't died and gotten his way instead), so the whole issue might be redundant.
Given that they were Belarussians and Ukrainians patriots (the later of which felt they'd been betrayed in their alliance with the Poles, the former which just didn't like Poles, and the Poles didn't like them by any accounts), yeah, they definitely did not consider themselves Polish. The (failed) efforts of Polonization probably did little more than further alienate the Belarussians by the time the Second World War rolled around (apparently, Ukrainians also resisted Polonization, especially from a religious aspect, but I'm not as familiar with that). Which is not to say that there wasn't a Polish minority population there, or that it in any way justified the later partitioning of Poland in 1939.
Being fair, the only thing that let the British hold out was the channel and RAF. German blitz was just too fast for France to react.
France don't do badly in wars, just the wars that are televised. :rotate:
There is a lot of excellent literature on the Potsdam & Yalta conferences, I'd say that you should go ahead and read some of it(and make an effort to read both sides, as most of it has been published during the cold war).
Edit:
Eastern Europe & the Balkans would have been in war within another 15 years after the territory reallocation following WW1. Yes, probably not anything closer to the scale that actually happened, but a conflict was a matter of time.
I've heard that the remaining German Communists (those who survived six years of partisan life or the death camps) also made a point to flex their muscle with their new-found "credibility"--basically, "We told you the Nazis were up to no good, but you just laughed when they started arresting us and the Jews"--and pulled a Tito. I think there was some reluctance in Moscow to rely on mayors, bureaucrats, etc., from the Third Reich (unlike the West) for civilian administration.
No one congratulates you when you do whats expected.
Man the post-colonial white man's burden patriarchy is amazing in these comments
Maybe. I know there was a fear in Moscow (not necessarily a realistic one, but a fear all the same) that Hitler might eventually succeed in his attempts to sway the United States and United Kingdom towards a ceasefire to form a "unified front" against the USSR (with 80 percent of Germany's Army there, there wasn't a lot in the way of reserves anyway). A fear of the reverse probably existed.
I know that the US and UK feared that the USSR would negotiate a separate peace with Japan.
Its worth mentioning how traumatised everyone was after WWI. There was a lot of denial in the buildup to WWII because no-one wanted to believe it could happen again, especially so soon.
Wait....
What exactly were the Allies to do during the Warsaw Uprising? Declare double war on Nazi Germany and start actually making an effort? Supplies were dropped into Poland during the Warsaw Uprising. The Western Front couldn't skip over Europe magically to get to Poland. Again, be pissed at Russia.
And after the War were the Western Allies supposed to just keep going through Germany and invade Russia, while the US was still fighting Japan in the Pacific, after the largest conflict in history?
And UK/France did do something when Germany invaded Poland. They declared war! The idea that they owed Poland an immediate and fruitless suicide attack against a fortified and mobilized alliance of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Soviet Russia to make them feel better is insanity. And assigning malice towards Eastern Europe to the post-war agreements is the height of arrogance. It wasn't about Poland, the perennial spoils of war of Germany and Russia.
The Czechs, OK they got fucked. But the Allies were no more in position to stop that invasion than they were the invasion of Poland. Appeasement wasn't adopted because it would be too easy to defeat Germany.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
I mean really. Really. Really.
Maybe Poland wasn't owed anything, but there were Polish men who shed their blood on our behalf for a promise that wasn't kept.
If war had started in Czechoslovakia and France had declared war on Germany, Germany would have been in a two front war, with practically no defenses to speak of on one front. They would have lost, and badly. Of course Britain and France fell over themselves in giving Hitler what he wanted, so...
Second, Poland screwed itself over. As Churchill summed up succinctly - 'The defence of Poland depends upon having an effective Eastern Front, and an effective Eastern Front depends on the participation of the USSR.' Except that up to the very end Poland steadfastly refused to allow Russian troops onto Polish soil, and when Britain and France sent negotiators to talk about the possibility of a joint treaty against Hitler they were faced with a flat question they couldn't answer, "Would Poland let us move our troops to meet Hitler or not?"
(And that's not mentioning that Britain and France signed over one of the most developed (in terms of social and political structure) Eastern European countries with an effective well trained military, as well as one of those most interested in ties with the West) without even trying, and pledged to go to war over Poland, which, put simply, wasn't exactly the friendliest of nations to the West.)
(And also how France completely screwed over their own foreign policy, which had been based around an alliance of smaller nations + France against the larger Germany, by showing it wasn't willing to come to the aid of an ally in need.)
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I'm reading a great account of the eastern theatre of WWII right now, and this bit's pretty interesting. After Hiroshima Stalin realised he had only a limited amount of time to loot or occupy Manchuria so Russia raced across the border and conquered the place in a couple of weeks.
The US didn't really want the USSR involved on the far eastern theatre, but didn't actively oppose such a thing because they had no effective means of stopping Stalin if he chose to roll a couple of million angry Russians into Manchuria. The US went to lengths to sideline pretty much everyone else in the pacific campaign to subdue Japan, partly because they didn't give a damn about empires like France and Britain regaining imperial colonies in Vietnam, Burma, Singapore and so forth, and partly because they were determined to force Japan's surrender on their own.
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It shows you the priorities. the UK/US let the Soviets and the Germans bleed themselves dry until 1944; the sheer scale and losses on the Eastern Front followed by the Soviet push west meant that Hitler kept moving divisions over to the East, and thus meant the Western Front wasn't nearly as tough as it could have been. Stalin didn't care particularly for casualties; if the British and the Americans had to face 2+ million, they would have been more inclined to sue for a peace treaty as opposed to Stalin's demands of unconditional surrender/annihilation.
Stalin was desperate for the West to enter the war and take some of the pressure off the eastern front, but hey, he was happy for Hitler to romp across the continent for a couple of years as long as he didn't turn eastwards so no-one was in any hurry to do him a favour that would have crippled the attempt to liberate France.
Also, while the casualties on the eastern front were indeed much, much higher overall, the fighting that took place on the frontlines of Overlord as the Americans, British and Canadian forces plunged into France produced a casualty rate comparable to that of the eastern theatre. Around 600,000 casualties in a couple of months of fighting.
And I am unaware of any evidence that either Churchill or Roosevelt would have settled for anything less than unconditional surrender from the Nazis. Their projected casualty rates for D-Day were significantly higher than the ones they actually sustained, so they were plainly expecting things to be even tougher than they ended up being.
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I may have come across more favourable to stalin, but that was unintended. I just wanted to say that given the totality of the war on the East and the delay to the launch of the Western invasion of Europe, these two all but sealed the fate of the Eastern countries. Stalin sure as hell wasn't going to allow anyone else to march up to the Don without bogging them down in Poland, the Ukraine and the Balkans.
As to your second point, the rhetoric of 'nothing but final surrender' is one thing, but I'd imagine public support for of FDR and Churchill would have waned if combined casualties started rising above the 2 million mark. It was just that the Soviets mauled all the best divisions of the Wehrmact, sparing the Western Front from Kursks and Stalingrads.