- Joined
- Dec 7, 2018
The lesser of two evils isn't ever a palatable choice but that was the choice which was there and the end result is something I think the former Warsaw Pact can agree worked better even if they resent it and deserve that privilege. As for the soviets, as odious as they were and far reaching in their own right as they turned out to be were much easier to contain than the Nazis were ever going to be in the event of their victory. Remember THAT WW2 wasn't the first time that the continent saw an imperialistic and aggressive Germany and had to suffer from it. Russia tends to poke and prod but they're off in their own corner for the most part but the Germans in both their modern empires threatened not only Eastern Europe but struck and challenged Western Europe (and by extension the rest of the world) as well.
In the years leading into and during WW1, they had defeated and humiliated the French, attempted to start a war during the Morocco crisis, invaded Belgium and brutalized the country as it originally sought neutrality, used Lenin as an agent to foment the October Revolution, and had spent decades attempting to upend the British navy with their own. They already had a history of doing this kind of thing and in the lead up to WW2 and during it they partitioned the Czechs, probably cheated the Austrians into being annexed in an election, openly flaunted their earlier treaty instead of properly renegotiating, used a false flag on the polish to split them with the soviets, terror bombed England, and betrayed their own ally in a mad dash for oil. Every political figure in the world saw these guys start shit for 50 years and if it came down to having the Germans rule the continent under a bunch of eccentric wackjobs like the Nazis or having the Russians slice off a portion that you could feasibly contain then you would probably make that same choice.
Yeah, I wasn't arguing the western allies were exactly perfect. They probably thought the Nazis would be useful as a buffer state at that point or otherwise weren't willing to give the soviets a win thinking they could handle it themselves later anyway. Of course, that was a mistake which the French in particular paid for dearly and will never live down.
