On: The Mao-Kissinger Meeting of 1973

[gattilorenz]

You have a point when you notice that I lazily used “socialism”, I did mean the bolsheviks and the communist revolutionaries.

I think the rest wouldn’t change much: the things you mention don’t have much to do with having moral scruples against Stalin’s mass murders. It seems to me that the main reason was still “we don’t do business with bolsheviks”. Of course the main reason is not the only one, and had the other powers realized who was leading Germany they maybe would have been more open to Stalin’s requests…

[qwytw → gattilorenz]

> I think the rest wouldn’t change much: the things you mention don’t have much to do with having moral scruples against Stalin’s mass murders.

I don't agree ( if you also include Lenin's mass murders). Of course a lot of it has to do with the fear the the Bolsheviks would do the same in their countries in they ever came to power.

> It seems to me that the main reason was still “we don’t do business with bolsheviks

Main reason of what? Poland had some pretty good reasons to not want any soviet troops in it's territory.

> would have been more open to Stalin’s requests…

Like allowing him to have Eastern Europe? Well the Anglo-Polish treaty even had a secret clause saying that it only applied in case Germany specifically attacked Poland and Britain was not obliged to join the war in case the Soviets invaded.

Again it's not that relevant. It's highly unlikely that Germany could have defeated France in 1940 without Soviet support. Germany had almost no oil and many other vital resources left after the invasion of Poland (it imported most of it's oil from America). So the Soviets simply had to stay out it. They chose to support Germany instead. I really don't see how anything that the allies did could be considered to be more foolish and/or shortsighted than the German–Soviet Commercial Agreement of 1940.

Amongst other things Germany would've entirely ran out of grain, rubber, manganese and oil by the Autumn of 1941 or much earlier without the imports form the USSR but Stalin had a better plan which resulted in millions of unnecessary deaths..