the_dunk_tank

it's an attempt to exaggerate the molotov ribbentrop pact and ignore the lead up to it. The USSR tried to do realpolitik in two ways. first they went around trying to form an antifascist alliance with the "Liberal Democracies" of Europe in the early 30s. Naturally the "Liberal Democracies" of Europe did not take them upon this offer because A) They were trading with, funding, enabling and/or ignoring fascist italy and fascist Germany and B) They were hoping to use the fascist states as an anticommunist bulwark. Slowly all these countries started to sign nonaggression pacts with the fascists. The USSR was the last to do so, fearing invasion, and needing to buy time to move their factories East, out of Hitler's way. So they signed the molotov ribbentrop pact, and invaded Poland alongside Germany. Now there's two ways of looking at this. One is that they teamed up with Hitler to fuck up Poland. The other way of looking at it is they temporarily prevented East Poland from being invaded by Nazi Germany. They also got into the winter war with finland. Stalin expected Finland would also be used as a corridor for Nazi invasion. They tried to buy that land from Finland, but Finland refused. After the Winter War, Finland gave intelligence to Germany, became an axis power, and allowed Germany to invade through that corridor.