this post was submitted on 25 Apr 2025
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[–] PugJesus@lemmy.world 12 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

The only think keeping the capitalists from shooting at the communists was being on opposite sides of Germany.

Of course, the extensive strategic cooperation and material aid didn't exist, they were just refraining from shooting at each other.

The capitalists meanwhile were so anxious about communists in Western Europe that you’re arbitrarily right just because they refused to intervene in Spain and Portugal

You do remember that WW2 was to stop fascist interventions in neighboring countries, right?

[–] MudMan@fedia.io 4 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Could have told that to the Spanish when they were being bombed by German planes. See, they thought they were a democracy being attacked by a fascist coup receiving political and military aid from the Nazis, but they didn't realize that they didn't have a land border with Germany, so it didn't count. That was their real problem. See, the British got bombed when France was already Nazi, so that counted and they got liberated. Should have waited a few years. Rookie mistake.

[–] PugJesus@lemmy.world 8 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Should have waited a few years. Rookie mistake.

Yes, WW2 did not start at the first fascist interventions. Congratulations for knowing what every schoolchild is taught?

[–] MudMan@fedia.io 2 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

EVERY schoolchild?

I am kinda curious to know where you're from now, but I don't like being too explicit about that myself, so I won't push it.

For what it's worth, the first time I had a conversation about how fuzzy and arbitrary the "official" start of WW2 is I was in high school. "Wait, so Germany was bombing Spain since 1936 and Italy was straight up invading Ethiopia since 1935? How is that an 'interbellum'?" didn't require that much maturity to bring up.

I had good history teachers in high school, incidentally. Kudos to them.

[–] PugJesus@lemmy.world 1 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

I am kinda curious to know where you’re from now, but I don’t like to be too explicit about that myself, so I won’t push it.

The US. "Nazis were fucking around all over Europe, and attempts were made to ignore or appease them before Poland forced the issue" is pretty standard.

[–] MudMan@fedia.io 2 points 20 hours ago

Yeah? Well, not being from the US that's not quite how I heard that tale.

For one, who made the attempts? Gonna guess the implied "we" in that framing doesn't include Ethiopia, Spain, Portugal, Italy itself and a bunch of others, right? Not much appeasement going on in Guernica, you'll have to admit.

I mean, the underlying facts are the same, but appeasement as an attempt to pacify Germany versus appeasement as a politically convenient way to avoid intervention in areas where opposition to the fascists was heavily aligned with communist or broadly marxist stances are meaningfully different framings. Little of column A, little of column B, I have to assume. Lots of column ethnocentrism, almost certainly.