That’s quite unfair judgement. Poland had back huge amounts of German land and German population. That is verifiable by the fact that after WW2 Poland depopulated those territories by expelling Germans from there. The 1.09.1939 is not the same as Russian invasion in Ukraine. It is the same as Ukrainian counter invasion following initial advancement of Russia. And saying that this letter was a PsyOps or Propaganda is EXACTLY what Russians did when US intelligence warned everyone about the coming invasion. But… Vae Victis
I am not entirely sure of your line of reasoning here but I think you want to equate the Polish domination of German lands post-1919 with the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. And the German attack in September 1939 with the Ukrainian counter-offensive from April 2022 and forwards.
I guess you can draw those parallels, but they are far from perfect. In my opinion the Russian situation post-1991 is much more similar to Germany post-1919 than Poland post-1919. Mostly because Germany had lost a major war, just like Russia, and tried to return from a period of weakness. Just like Russia has done since 1991.
The similarities of Poland and Ukraine are of course not perfect. But as long as we are speaking of national psychological properties I think there are decent similarities between Germany in the 1930s and Russia in the 2000s and 2010s. Both are resurgent nations convinced they have been cheated of their innate rights.
The line of reasoning is to try make people think a little bit deeper. If EVERYONE, for 80 years, including Hollywood (which is a hallmark of education beacon, right?), beat the same drum 'Germany is bad, Hitler is the worst', then MAYBE there's some agenda in it and thinking people should be careful when they put more oil in that fire.
First of all, USSR and Communism has done VASTLY more horrible things than Third Reich. By orders of magnitude. Those are facts, proven, verifiable and still visible in half of Europe (not your half, thanks to Hitler, but I will get back to that soon). And yet, there is ZERO condemnation of those regimes. Practically zero. People walk around with T-shirts of Che Guevara, who was an amazingly creative sadist (by psychiatric definition, I am not simply bashing on him). Red flags are waved everywhere. Marx is worshiped. Even more - the whole story of the "oppressed people" is coming full circle again.
This is evil beyond comprehension. While every Jew having a passport in its hand could have exited Third Reich almost to the end of the WW2, the vast majority of the people behind the Iron Curtain could not change even their city. Tens of millions were killed. The rest were raped, tortured, imprisoned (for thought crimes!) and sentenced to live a desperate dull life. Families were FORCED to live with and smile to and greet the same murderers that killed their close relatives. That ACTUALLY happened under the communist reign and there are very many witnesses still alive.
And this could have happened to the rest of Europe, too. The same way Putin prepared the invasion in Ukraine, Stalin were preparing USSR to invade Europe. The same way the US intelligence KNEW 6 months before Feb 2022 and tried to warn everybody, Germans knew VERY well of the prepared gigantic force. Germany did not stand ANY change, had this force were unleashed in the Europe. This is also verifiable fact. When the invasion from the German side was revealed by the Soviet spies to their military command, they did not believe them, because Germany had no chance in such a war. And this is the reason, the German invasion succeeded that much in the beginning. The captured ammunition from the Soviets were used at least for an year, because the domestic industry couldn't manufacture even 1/10 of the needs.
So, what Hitler did was to try to defend Germany (AND the rest of Europe) from the Soviet horde. This was well understood back in the time. The volunteers from all around the Europe joined Waffen SS. The last of them to defend Hitler bunker was French, by the way. Even the politicians knew that. The deep calculation that UK and the US has made is to push those two dictators against each other, so they can overtake the whole Europe. And it worked in the end, but it was really a close call. Churchill, who was in the 1930s almost the ONLY politician to speak ill of Hitler (make the contrast with the current situation), himself said 'we slaughtered the wrong pig' about the results of the WW2.
Hitler wanted from Poland two things - the territories with German population, which is absolutely in the spirit of the times - everyone was acting in that manner, AND a border with USSR so they can do the surprising blow and capture the Soviet forces when they build up (which they DID in 1940-1941). He begged Polish government to give him some way to achieve that WHICH would have meant protection for Poland as well. That's also well understood in that time in Poland. But it's an ugly truth to be admitted, because Poland ended up under Soviets, which WOULD HAVE BEEN the fate of the whole Europe, had Hitler hadn't started operation Barbarossa.
So, no, Russia in 2022 was not like Germany in 1939, it was like USSR in 1941. And Putin is not like Hitler, he's like Stalin.
Was Stalin's Soviet Union really that strong? I've heard from other (Russian) sources that they couldn't have won without huge amounts of resources coming from the US?
That is true, but bear in mind two facts: they got a devastating blow in the beginning of the war and they had to defend (which they were not prepared for). If Soviets had attacked first, it’s quite possible they would have wiped out the entire continent. Technologically, in the beginning of the war, they were ahead of Germans. Germans were better because of their superior “human element” and, again, because of the surprising attack.
You are talking about ideological similarities. But this article is all about political similarities. Stalin was the type of leader who thought military adventurism meant attacking Japan three days after the US nuked Hiroshima. He would never have done anything remotely as reckless as Hitler's attack on Poland or Putin attack on Ukraine. In that regard the similarities are all between Germany 1939 and Russia 2022.
I just explained why Hitler’s attack is on Poland wasn’t reckless. Seriously, why are you dismissing everything else good on this blog with such a comment?
I suppose we differ in our analyses. I do think the German attack on Poland was reckless. And I believe history confirms this opinion, the chain of events set in motion on 1 September 1939 led to the Soviets advancing their positions in Europe on a scale no one could have imagined just a few years prior. Maybe you argue (I am not sure you do) that these events could not have been predicted in 1939. I do not agree on that either. The risk-reward ratio for a German attack on Poland simply was not very good. In other words, the attack was reckless.
The question is what would have happened if they didn't attack Poland and subsequently USSR. The answer is - Sweden, as Baltic republics, would have been Soviets.
The idea for this article came when I read the Swedish-language book Frankrikes fall (The fall of France) by French-Swedish author Pierre Gilly in which the correspondence between Hitler and Daladier was briefly mentioned. Since I found it interesting I did some follow-up research at Google News Archive which led to this article. To summarize, this letter writing of Hitler is not something I dug up from my limitless stock of historical knowledge but rather something I happened to stumble over quite recently.
Nevertheless, it was really a brilliant piece. I was already prepared for some of your arguments, having learned recently that Hitler had made overtures for peace with the British on more than one occasion:
But your comparison with Putin was extremely interesting, and I agree with you that "with formal peace it would have been much more difficult for Hitler to persuade his Germans to attack westwards towards France... Much less north into Scandinavia or south into the Balkans. The Soviets would also have found it more difficult to demand political and territorial concessions of Finland and the Baltic states had there not been a major war ongoing." I wouldn't have been able to come up with it on my own, even given the same pieces you were working with; my mind doesn't follow these routes naturally.
Contemplating a world that might have grown up after sanctions, rather than a full-blown Second World War, drives home the idea that for once, the world leaders are doing something right. It takes a lot of patience to stand by and watch.
Ironically, not everyone did. This blog does not very often gain new subscribers. But we lose subscribers even more seldomly. In fact it has only happened a couple of times, and only immediately after we have gained a bunch of new subscribers. But shortly after posting this article we lost a subscriber. There has been no changes in the number of subscribers for over a month meaning that a quite long-term subscriber got so offended over this particular article that he or she unsubscribed without hesitation. Given your opinion this article seem to evoke different emotions in different readers.
Nah, you're probably overreacting. The most common reason for unsubscribing is probably a reaction like "wall of text, blah, blah, blah, press unsubscribe button". I have done that myself numerous times during the last year. After a certain number of emails I don't want to read, I unsubscribe. So I expect others to do the same with our blog.
I don't use Substack's built-in "subscribe" functionality. I use RSS instead.
Once, I got officially subscribed to a number of Substack blogs that I was subscribed to via RSS (and commented under) (including this one), either due to a bug or due to pressing the subscribe button in exasperation after being pestered about it too much. I then unsubscribed and I think that's why I don't get notifications for replies on those blogs anymore.
Sorry to hear that! But I wouldn't worry about it - your sample size is tiny. I realize it's tempting to watch the numbers and ascribe meaning to them, but when they are this small it's probably giving you more noise than signal.
That’s quite unfair judgement. Poland had back huge amounts of German land and German population. That is verifiable by the fact that after WW2 Poland depopulated those territories by expelling Germans from there. The 1.09.1939 is not the same as Russian invasion in Ukraine. It is the same as Ukrainian counter invasion following initial advancement of Russia. And saying that this letter was a PsyOps or Propaganda is EXACTLY what Russians did when US intelligence warned everyone about the coming invasion. But… Vae Victis
I am not entirely sure of your line of reasoning here but I think you want to equate the Polish domination of German lands post-1919 with the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. And the German attack in September 1939 with the Ukrainian counter-offensive from April 2022 and forwards.
I guess you can draw those parallels, but they are far from perfect. In my opinion the Russian situation post-1991 is much more similar to Germany post-1919 than Poland post-1919. Mostly because Germany had lost a major war, just like Russia, and tried to return from a period of weakness. Just like Russia has done since 1991.
The similarities of Poland and Ukraine are of course not perfect. But as long as we are speaking of national psychological properties I think there are decent similarities between Germany in the 1930s and Russia in the 2000s and 2010s. Both are resurgent nations convinced they have been cheated of their innate rights.
The line of reasoning is to try make people think a little bit deeper. If EVERYONE, for 80 years, including Hollywood (which is a hallmark of education beacon, right?), beat the same drum 'Germany is bad, Hitler is the worst', then MAYBE there's some agenda in it and thinking people should be careful when they put more oil in that fire.
First of all, USSR and Communism has done VASTLY more horrible things than Third Reich. By orders of magnitude. Those are facts, proven, verifiable and still visible in half of Europe (not your half, thanks to Hitler, but I will get back to that soon). And yet, there is ZERO condemnation of those regimes. Practically zero. People walk around with T-shirts of Che Guevara, who was an amazingly creative sadist (by psychiatric definition, I am not simply bashing on him). Red flags are waved everywhere. Marx is worshiped. Even more - the whole story of the "oppressed people" is coming full circle again.
This is evil beyond comprehension. While every Jew having a passport in its hand could have exited Third Reich almost to the end of the WW2, the vast majority of the people behind the Iron Curtain could not change even their city. Tens of millions were killed. The rest were raped, tortured, imprisoned (for thought crimes!) and sentenced to live a desperate dull life. Families were FORCED to live with and smile to and greet the same murderers that killed their close relatives. That ACTUALLY happened under the communist reign and there are very many witnesses still alive.
And this could have happened to the rest of Europe, too. The same way Putin prepared the invasion in Ukraine, Stalin were preparing USSR to invade Europe. The same way the US intelligence KNEW 6 months before Feb 2022 and tried to warn everybody, Germans knew VERY well of the prepared gigantic force. Germany did not stand ANY change, had this force were unleashed in the Europe. This is also verifiable fact. When the invasion from the German side was revealed by the Soviet spies to their military command, they did not believe them, because Germany had no chance in such a war. And this is the reason, the German invasion succeeded that much in the beginning. The captured ammunition from the Soviets were used at least for an year, because the domestic industry couldn't manufacture even 1/10 of the needs.
So, what Hitler did was to try to defend Germany (AND the rest of Europe) from the Soviet horde. This was well understood back in the time. The volunteers from all around the Europe joined Waffen SS. The last of them to defend Hitler bunker was French, by the way. Even the politicians knew that. The deep calculation that UK and the US has made is to push those two dictators against each other, so they can overtake the whole Europe. And it worked in the end, but it was really a close call. Churchill, who was in the 1930s almost the ONLY politician to speak ill of Hitler (make the contrast with the current situation), himself said 'we slaughtered the wrong pig' about the results of the WW2.
Hitler wanted from Poland two things - the territories with German population, which is absolutely in the spirit of the times - everyone was acting in that manner, AND a border with USSR so they can do the surprising blow and capture the Soviet forces when they build up (which they DID in 1940-1941). He begged Polish government to give him some way to achieve that WHICH would have meant protection for Poland as well. That's also well understood in that time in Poland. But it's an ugly truth to be admitted, because Poland ended up under Soviets, which WOULD HAVE BEEN the fate of the whole Europe, had Hitler hadn't started operation Barbarossa.
So, no, Russia in 2022 was not like Germany in 1939, it was like USSR in 1941. And Putin is not like Hitler, he's like Stalin.
Was Stalin's Soviet Union really that strong? I've heard from other (Russian) sources that they couldn't have won without huge amounts of resources coming from the US?
That is true, but bear in mind two facts: they got a devastating blow in the beginning of the war and they had to defend (which they were not prepared for). If Soviets had attacked first, it’s quite possible they would have wiped out the entire continent. Technologically, in the beginning of the war, they were ahead of Germans. Germans were better because of their superior “human element” and, again, because of the surprising attack.
You are talking about ideological similarities. But this article is all about political similarities. Stalin was the type of leader who thought military adventurism meant attacking Japan three days after the US nuked Hiroshima. He would never have done anything remotely as reckless as Hitler's attack on Poland or Putin attack on Ukraine. In that regard the similarities are all between Germany 1939 and Russia 2022.
I just explained why Hitler’s attack is on Poland wasn’t reckless. Seriously, why are you dismissing everything else good on this blog with such a comment?
I suppose we differ in our analyses. I do think the German attack on Poland was reckless. And I believe history confirms this opinion, the chain of events set in motion on 1 September 1939 led to the Soviets advancing their positions in Europe on a scale no one could have imagined just a few years prior. Maybe you argue (I am not sure you do) that these events could not have been predicted in 1939. I do not agree on that either. The risk-reward ratio for a German attack on Poland simply was not very good. In other words, the attack was reckless.
The question is what would have happened if they didn't attack Poland and subsequently USSR. The answer is - Sweden, as Baltic republics, would have been Soviets.
Brilliant.
Thank you (I think).
The idea for this article came when I read the Swedish-language book Frankrikes fall (The fall of France) by French-Swedish author Pierre Gilly in which the correspondence between Hitler and Daladier was briefly mentioned. Since I found it interesting I did some follow-up research at Google News Archive which led to this article. To summarize, this letter writing of Hitler is not something I dug up from my limitless stock of historical knowledge but rather something I happened to stumble over quite recently.
Nevertheless, it was really a brilliant piece. I was already prepared for some of your arguments, having learned recently that Hitler had made overtures for peace with the British on more than one occasion:
https://www.upi.com/Archives/1940/07/19/Hitler-offers-Britain-peace-or-destruction/6824181303557/
https://www.warhistoryonline.com/war-articles/nazis-truce-britain-1941-exchange-wanted-unobstructed-attack-ussr.html
But your comparison with Putin was extremely interesting, and I agree with you that "with formal peace it would have been much more difficult for Hitler to persuade his Germans to attack westwards towards France... Much less north into Scandinavia or south into the Balkans. The Soviets would also have found it more difficult to demand political and territorial concessions of Finland and the Baltic states had there not been a major war ongoing." I wouldn't have been able to come up with it on my own, even given the same pieces you were working with; my mind doesn't follow these routes naturally.
Contemplating a world that might have grown up after sanctions, rather than a full-blown Second World War, drives home the idea that for once, the world leaders are doing something right. It takes a lot of patience to stand by and watch.
I am glad you liked it.
Ironically, not everyone did. This blog does not very often gain new subscribers. But we lose subscribers even more seldomly. In fact it has only happened a couple of times, and only immediately after we have gained a bunch of new subscribers. But shortly after posting this article we lost a subscriber. There has been no changes in the number of subscribers for over a month meaning that a quite long-term subscriber got so offended over this particular article that he or she unsubscribed without hesitation. Given your opinion this article seem to evoke different emotions in different readers.
Nah, you're probably overreacting. The most common reason for unsubscribing is probably a reaction like "wall of text, blah, blah, blah, press unsubscribe button". I have done that myself numerous times during the last year. After a certain number of emails I don't want to read, I unsubscribe. So I expect others to do the same with our blog.
I don't use Substack's built-in "subscribe" functionality. I use RSS instead.
Once, I got officially subscribed to a number of Substack blogs that I was subscribed to via RSS (and commented under) (including this one), either due to a bug or due to pressing the subscribe button in exasperation after being pestered about it too much. I then unsubscribed and I think that's why I don't get notifications for replies on those blogs anymore.
Are you guys chatting in the comment section, while living in the same house? That's hilarious!
It's a very noisy house. When we are not chatting here we use G-mail Chat.
Sorry to hear that! But I wouldn't worry about it - your sample size is tiny. I realize it's tempting to watch the numbers and ascribe meaning to them, but when they are this small it's probably giving you more noise than signal.