Post by jerry krausNo, of course not. All Stalin wanted was security against that lunatic Hitler, he had plenty of territory as it was.
Codswallop on several levels.
Firstly: if you want security "against that lunatic Hitler"< it pays *Not To SUPPORT THAT LUNATIC'S REMILITARIZATION in the first place.*
But that is what the Bolshevik state- and particularly Stalin- did throughout the interbellum. Starting with Hitler's Imperialist/Monarchist predecessors in the Reichswehr in the early 1920's (if that), and with Hitler himself in 1935 at the latest.
The Hitler-Stalin Credit Agreement of 1935 was dedicated to financing illegal German Rearmament. This was something the Soviets knew from the start of negotiations over it, because the German negotiators told them. And yet the Soviets went ahead with it anyway in an attempt to patch up what ripples had emerged in the German-Soviet underground relations and to pay down some of their debts.
In one of the earliest ethical discourses in recorded history- and certainly within the Western Canon- Socrates (or Plato) rejects the idea that proper ethics is merely a matter of giving someone what they are owed under the idea that if you borrow an axe from someone to cut wood, and in the meantime that person goes insane and comes to you asking for that axe back it is irrational and immoral to abet him. Because giving him the axe would be giving him the tool to murder other people. This is what the Soviet-German Credit Agreement of 1935 amounts to, and it would be bad enough.
However, the year *AFTER* that, Stalin approached Hitler AGAIN for negotiations for an Even Larger Credit Agreement to help finance the Third Reich and especially illegal German rearmament. This goes well and truly beyond returning the axe to a murderous, homicidal lunatic. This is not only doing that, but LAUNCHING INTO A SALES PITCH designed to try and sell the homicidal lunatic an even greater amount of flesh-cutting implements on credit.
Ironically, it was *Hitler* who refused this since he believed the old credit agreement would suffice and he preferred to avoid public agreements with the Soviets if he could. Which along with the Spanish Civil War's outbreak was one of the two crucial links that led to the deterioration of Nazi-Soviet relations in the mid '30s.
If "All Stalin wanted was security against that Lunatic Hitler" this makes absolutely zero sense whatsoever. Especially that second move.
However, if you realize that Stalin was a totalitarian, expansionist lunatic with his own agenda and a vested interest in pending the Versailles Peace it starts to come together.
And secondly: Stalin didn't see himself as having "Plenty" of territory, and wanted more (as the annexation of Moldavia, the Baltic Three, parts of Finland, and so on showed). And Stalin's at least stated ideology was never about territory per se, it was about economic control. And spreading that form of control and social organizaiton globally.
Post by jerry krausThe problem was, Poland categorically refused to work with the Soviets, and
Britain effectively refused to work with the Soviets, in terms of their utter > lack of cooperation with them, despite conciliatory lip service.
Firstly, this is not true. The Allies were perhaps neve Committed to a policy of alliance with Stalin to contain Hitler (but then again *Neither Was Stalin* as the events of the early and late 1930's show) but they certainyl broached the possibility
Secondly: It is EXCEEDINGLY hard to blame anybody else for refusing to work with the Soviets according to their own policy when the Soviets off half-heartedly about this Popular Front Against Fascism but did not take many concrete steps towards it, and then when *one did suddenly form, the Soviets were unwilling to work with it.* Or rather, were unwilling to work wholeheartedly with the non-Stalinist Communist elements.
I speak of course of the Popular Front that emerged to try and beat out the NAtionalist bloc in the election campaigns of 1935-6, and later organized to resist the Nationalist Coup in one of the great morning stars of the coming world war. Now it is notable that the Soviets were the most active in supporting it out of any major power, which cuts a notable contrast to the ineffective neutrality of the Western Allies.
But take a gander at Orwell or co to see what that "support" entailed.
In addition to being less effective than the Italian and German support, the Soviets were more obsessed with CONTROLLING the Popular Front and purging it of their enemies than actually winning the war. In the acid test of the Popular Front strategy and rhetori- the golden oppertunity to show the Allies and nonalligneds that the Soviets were serious about making a good faith common alliance against Fascism- Stalin was never willing to commit. He would not stop purging Trotskyites and Anarchists. He would not stop trading under the table with Hitler. He kept his aid conditional at best, and apparently decided it was better to have the Popular Front be destroyed by the rebellion than to have it victorious but not under his control.
I don't think it is a coincidence that in the last year of the Spanish Civil War, Stalin kicked out Litvinov- the prophet of Soviet Popular Front and Collective Security policies-, appointed Molotov, and signed the Pact.
And finally: the Poles and British (but especially the Poles) had stellar reasons to worry about collaborating too closely with Stalin and the SOviets. And with hindsight it is clear their worries were correct. That not only was Stalin not fully committed to checking Hitler in a Collective Security allignment, but that the passage of Soviet troops and intel personnel would have eroded Polish sovereignty unless VERY carefully controlled. As indeed we know happened, not just in 1939 and 1944, but from history before. When Pyotrian Greencoats marching across the territory of Poland-Lithuania in the 18th century spelled the end of that commonwealth's independence.'
Post by jerry krausStalin was by far the most rational person at the table in the late 1930's, at > least in terms of foreign policy.
Perhaps, though I still get the feeling you are ignoring the long history of Soviet-German mutual aid.
But rational does not mean Good.
It does not mean Peaceful.
It does not mean Non-Expansionist.
Post by jerry krausHe really just wanted peace and stability.
Absolutely Not.
If anything, the Soviet State was one of the polities that was hurt the *most* by peace and stability along the terms of the Versailles Settlement. In addition to the ideological motives I outlined in my previous post and how Marxist-Leninism was an inherently expansionist ideology with global pretensions, the Soviet Union had the more practical problem of being diplomatically and strategically isolated from most of the world. Even after the "Thawing out" period of the late 1920's and 1930's when it began to exchange diplomats and regular embassies.
And this was especially true with most of its neighbors, who ranged from naive and accepting (Lithuania mostly, since Poland was the bigger problem) to paranoid but lukewarm (the Chinese KMT) but mostly amounted to Cold, Hostile, and Distrustful. For reasons that again were quite logical. Especially when you start counting up all the terrorist attacks, coup attempts, and so on that were sponsored from Soviet territory against them.
Post by jerry krausThe others, including France and Britain, all had axes to grind.
Perhaps, but France and Britain ahd much less of an axe to grind in the 1930's than the Soviets did. They were mostly (futilely) trying to put the Versailles settlement back together in a way that limited German power and respected the rights and independence of the Central/Eastern European minors.
This failed catastrophially, but it certainly isn't trying to do it.
Post by jerry krausBritain and France wanted Stalin to take Hitler down for the, and, that's
exactly what they ultimately arranged.
At most, I've seen the "Why can't they both fight and lose?" be put forth as this Pipe Dream amidst Western Cabinent government officials about what they Wished could have happened, without any particularly serious idea that it Could happen. And it is easy to see why.
The Third Reich and the Soviet Union had Zero land border up until 1939. Zero.
This waas the entire reason why Poland proved to be a bone in the craw to the last remotely serious interbellum attempt to form a Collective Security alliance between the West, the Soviets, and the Rest because they (UNDERSTANDABLY) were disturstful of their pre war enemies marching across their territory with hundreds of thousands of troops to support a pre war rival that had attacked them. Because without passage through Poland and other neutral states there was no way for the Germans or Soviets to get at each other.
Which was one reason for the partition.