Czechoslovakia decides to fight, September 1938

[Dilandu]

They are not opinions, they are historical facts.

Historical facts? Please. Facts are things that need to be interpreted.

Soviet intervention only

Supported the legitimate democratic government against the fascist dictator takeover. Only.

My father, Sergeant Miranda was wounded by a Russian bomb and if he had died I would not be writing this, but I do not retain any personal grudges, only historical curiosity for reasons of so much evil.

Please. Historical curiosity is to view situation from more than one point of view. Not declaring "one side is EVIL! and why, oh why you are?!"

 

[Justo Miranda]

They are not opinions, they are historical facts.

Historical facts? Please. Facts are things that need to be interpreted.

Soviet intervention only

Supported the legitimate democratic government against the fascist dictator takeover. Only.

My father, Sergeant Miranda was wounded by a Russian bomb and if he had died I would not be writing this, but I do not retain any personal grudges, only historical curiosity for reasons of so much evil.

Please. Historical curiosity is to view situation from more than one point of view. Not declaring "one side is EVIL! and why, oh why you are?!"

Fact interpreted by Robert Capa

 

[Arjen]

Soviet intervention only

Supported the legitimate democratic government against the fascist dictator takeover. Only.

While dabbling in the occasional purge among the Loyalists.

 

[Justo Miranda]

Soviet intervention only

Supported the legitimate democratic government against the fascist dictator takeover. Only.

While dabbling in the occasional purge among the Loyalists.

For the Soviets only the governments that favor them are democratic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland were not sufficiently democratic countries. The Spanish Popular Front gained power with reasonable promises of prosperity but had a plan to scientifically exterminate the elites, when the targeted assassinations began, the elites reacted to survive, they were not very intelligent, but the "Democratic Government" formed by communists and socialists made too many mistakes. Without the interested help of Germany, Poland and Italy the Katyn massacre would have occurred in Spain in 1937, once the war began no one had a choice.

Katyn massacre - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

https://uacrisis.org/en/mass-deportations-in-the-baltic-states-by-the-soviet-union

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_deportations_from_Estonia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_deportation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_deportations_from_Lithuania

 

[igor-mich]

Justo Miranda said:
My father, Sergeant Miranda was wounded by a Russian bomb and if he had died I would not be writing this, but I do not retain any personal grudges, only historical curiosity for reasons of so much evil.

Yes, your father was lucky and, thank God!
Only when you clarified about the Russian bomb here, and you don't want to remember how many Soviet people were killed by Czech weapons.
The Czech Republic was a Fascist weapons factory.
And this is not a fantasy, but a fact.

 

[Justo Miranda]

Justo Miranda said:
My father, Sergeant Miranda was wounded by a Russian bomb and if he had died I would not be writing this, but I do not retain any personal grudges, only historical curiosity for reasons of so much evil.

Yes, your father was lucky and, thank God!
Only when you clarified about the Russian bomb here, and you don't want to remember how many Soviet people were killed by Czech weapons.
The Czech Republic was a Fascist weapons factory.
And this is not a fantasy, but a fact.

I don't know how many Russian (not necessarily Soviet) people died because of nazi (non-fascist) weapons made in Czechoslovakia, it is not my specialty but in my opinion all lives are worth the same and all those useless deaths are something I sincerely regret.

 

[Archibald]

Folks, the tragic reality of the 30's was that, of the major powers and countries in Europe, the few democracies left (thus no far-right nor far left whackos) were
- Scandinavia (Finland and Norway paid the price, however)
- Belgium and the Netherlands, Switzerland
- Great Britain and France (and the latter democracy was fragilige at many levels)
(sorry if I forget some).

Being trapped between Hitler and Stalin, Europe could only become a shithole, either softly or brutally, sooner or later.

It is a tribute to Great Britain they kept their head up among this dark mess.

Even Sweden, for frack sake, compromised itself with notzis. So did Switzerland.

 

[kaiserd]

If there’s ever a case of needing to emphasise that history is more complicated and nuanced than certain ideologies and nationalists would like people to believe it is.

The Republican side in the Spainish Civil War was made up of various political stripes from centre, centre left out to radicals and communists. And as the war went on with the Republican side increasingly dependent on Soviet aid the communist factions influence (and of the Soviet “advisers” calling the shots) increased, including repression of what they viewed as political opponents on their own side. But it wasn’t (particularly at the start of the War or pre-war) the extreme far left Stalinist-style terror regime Spanish Nationalist propaganda sought (or up to today far-right actors continue to seek) to portray it as. It a more complicated picture than that.

And to portray the Stalins Russia as aggressively expansionist as Nazi Germany in the lead up to the War is simply poor incomplete history. They were both bad and evil but bad and evil in different ways, and this apparent need by some to continually directly equate them is absurdly reductive.
I appreciate that if you are sitting in Poland and only looking at it through that narrow lense there might not appear to be that much difference, particularly as the grudge after decades of tyrannical domination may be greater than the grudge for fewer years of determined racial genocide depending on your political bent and what aspects of history you want to emphasise for your own purposes.

 

[overscan (PaulMM)]

This topic is far off topic into politics again. If someone wants to discuss the original premise of the topic, let me know.