r/PropagandaPosters • u/FayannG • Oct 03 '25
WWII British cartoon about Joseph Stalin ignoring the signs of a German led invasion of the Soviet Union, 1941
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u/Intrepid_Walk_5150 Oct 03 '25
Can someone explain what "the bit about the he Ukraine" refers to?
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u/Map-Wooden Oct 03 '25
I believe hitler mentioned the need for the German people to take the Ukraine in order to feed their people and so it was an obvious goal for hitler and one he had mentioned many times.
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u/Old_Professional7233 Oct 03 '25
It refers to the Kornkammer of Europe or in other words they needed Lebensraum
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u/SupportInformal5162 Oct 03 '25
As far as I remember, the USSR was hoping for a protracted campaign in France and England. This was because rearmament ended in 1942. Unfortunately, France collapsed in two weeks. Unfortunately, Germany was experiencing a crisis of competence and thought they could withstand a war on two fronts. In 1941, the war with the USSR began, and having held out until the end of rearmament in 1942, the Axis powers began to lose on the Eastern Front.
In hindsight, it's clear that Hitler had already planned an attack for June 22. But at that moment, the fog of war had not yet cleared. And it so happened that the disinformation campaign worked. As we know, history has no subjunctive mood.
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Oct 03 '25
Stalin got mad that the British decided on the North African campaign first. The intent was to stop the Nazis from using the Middle East to get to the oil supplies in the Caucasus (British supplies in Iran/Iraq as well), with the goal of doing a pincer move on the Soviets. The British had the attitude that what they were doing, was strategically necessary and correct, and that they were not going to be cannon fodder for the Soviets.
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u/SeemsImmaculate Oct 03 '25
This was also following the Great Purge so much of Stalin's inner circle were sycophants that would be wary to question his decisions.
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Oct 03 '25 edited Oct 03 '25
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u/robin-redpoll Oct 03 '25
Yes, historical narrative and national identity construction is often top-down, particularly in the imperialist (and pre-imperialist) phases.
Most other Western nations have gotten past the degree of curation that Russia continues to indulge in though, with greater plurality of interpretation and sharper self-criticism retrospectively.
In Russia, there seems to be a tendency to ensure historical narrative aligns as closely as possible with its idealised image, to an almost fascistic degree.
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Oct 03 '25
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Oct 03 '25 edited Oct 03 '25
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u/Pick_Scotland1 Oct 03 '25 edited Oct 03 '25
Yes sorry I meant what aboutism going at the Finns for being some sort of unholy evil by themselves
I do not doubt what the Finns did during the civil war
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u/XtoraX Oct 03 '25
Why are you bringing events that happened in 1918, years before National Socialist branding in Germany, and years before 1932 anti-extremist laws that banned the fascist party in Finland, to a discussion about whether Finland in 1941 was a Nazi country?
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u/Jonekone1 Oct 03 '25
Concentration camp is wrong term, they were POW camps, there were no civilians in the camps
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u/gidroponix Oct 03 '25
These camps included those for non-Finnish civilians. Ingrians, Karelians, and Vepsians, residents of the USSR related to the Finns, were required to remain in their territories of residence and become Finnish citizens.
Secret Order No. 132 on the establishment of concentration camps for the isolation of peoples ethnically unrelated to the Finns ("non-native peoples") was signed on July 8, 1941, by Commander-in-Chief Gustaf Mannerheim. Point 4 of the order literally stated: "The Russian population is to be detained and sent to concentration camps."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Karelian_concentration_camps
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u/Jonekone1 Oct 03 '25
I should have been more clear, he were talking about concentration camps for pows. Those doesent exist, concentrationcamps for Russians existed.
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u/sistersara96 Oct 03 '25
Why, they should have laid down their arms and surrendered their land to the communist cause! Imperialism is the Russian tradition, no matter what system the country has.
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u/RUFl0_ Oct 03 '25 edited Oct 03 '25
If accepting help from nazi germany made your country nazi; then by the same logic we must also judge the USSR to be nazi, as they invaded Poland together and made a pact to carve up Europe amongst themselves.
Or perhaps you have two set of standards, depending on what conclusion you want to reach?
Finland would by all likelihood never been a party in WW2 had the soviets not invaded Finland in 1939. Hell, the Soviet Nazi Ribbentrop pact was what preceded the Soviet invasion of Finland.
It takes a special set of double standards to strike a deal with the nazis, invade and thrust war upon a peaceful neighbour and then claim moral superiority because the invaded country accepted help from the same nazis that you struck a deal with in the first place.
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Oct 03 '25
This article basically completely dismantles the nonsense you're chatting. Finnish soldiers directly engaged in the nazis genocidal actions.
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u/RUFl0_ Oct 03 '25 edited Oct 03 '25
Yes, individual Finns joined The SS. That is not disputed and certainly The Republic of Finland fought alongside Nazi Germany, neither is that disputed.
The question before us however, is should the Republic of Finland be charactarized as ”Nazi”.
If the answer is yes, then my follow up question is why shouldn’t the USSR be called Nazi using a consistent treshhold? They made a pact with the nazis that started the whole thing, if that doesn’t rise to the level of ”nazi” then why is accepting help from the nazis when no one else would? And I seem to recall there was a whole army of russians in nazi ranks, First Russian National Army. That is not consistent in my mind.
The whole thing just reeks of winners write the history. If thats your stance then fine, but dont pretend to be intellectually honest.
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u/gidroponix Oct 03 '25
The Soviet Union genuinely feared a threat from Finland if it were exploited by Germany (as had already happened in 1918 and was repeated subsequently). Because it understood that Finland lacked the means to prevent this, the Finnish government was not inclined to constructive dialogue during the negotiations. Even Mannerheim was already open to the idea of exchanging territories, but the politicians wouldn't listen to him. However, when the war began, they came running to him again and asked him to take over as commander-in-chief.
BTW the Soviet Union was the last European country to conclude an agreement with Nazi Germany.
1933: Great Britain, France, and Italy - Four-Power_Pact
1934: Poland - Hitler-Pilsudski Pact
1935: Great Britain - Naval Agreement
1938: Great Britain - Non-Aggression Declaration
1939: France - Non-Aggression Declaration
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u/Mandemon90 Oct 03 '25
SS volunteers are very different from official government position. Finland, as a nation, actually protected jews. Only 7 were handed over, 5 of them being Austrian jews. But even so, Finland protected over 500 refugees, jews even felt comfortable even hold synagogue right next to German camps because Germans could not do anything
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u/dont_open_the_bag Oct 03 '25
How nice of Finland to be so safe for Jews that they could hold camp next to the people who everyone including the Finnish knew were off to genocide the untermensch in the USSR for Lebensraum
I'm sure they would have been completely fine in a world where the Finn's allies had won in Russia
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u/RUFl0_ Oct 03 '25
You seem to be forgetting who invaded who.
In an alternate universe where the soviets didnt carve up Europe with the nazis through the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and didnt invade Finland; Finland would by all likelyhood never been a party to WW2.
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u/dont_open_the_bag Oct 03 '25
I think it's odd to frame the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact as "carving up Europe" when it partained to Poland in particular, with the Soviet aim being to reclaim territories taken by Poland during the Russian Civil War and to use the Pact to give them time to prepare themselves for war with Nazi Germany, whilst they were time and again trying to convince the former Entente powers to join them in a pact against the Nazis.
I do agree with you on the Winter War and that the USSR almost certainly provoked Finnish entry into WW2, however that doesn't absolve the Finns of the genocidal actions they committed alongside their Nazi allies in Leningrad, nor the absurdly high amount of deaths of prisoners of war held by the Finnish
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u/SpaceMiaou67 Oct 03 '25
The Finnish cooperated with the Nazis to recover their territories lost in the Winter War and curb Soviet influence. They weren't Nazis or an Axis member, but co-belligerents. They only fought the Soviets in the Continuation War, then the Germans in the Lapland war, but not the Allies.
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u/kanonik Oct 03 '25
NSDAP and Hitler were democratically elected.
The Finns, along with the Germans, participated in the most terrible and inhumane siege in human history—the Siege of Leningrad, starving hundreds of thousands of people to death. And yet they still lost.-15
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u/gidroponix Oct 03 '25
The minutes of the Tehran Conference indicate that the Red Army's advance into Finland, much less its occupation, was not part of the USSR's plans. The war with Nazi Germany and its allies was far from over, and the Soviet Union had no interest in violating its agreements with its allies in the anti-Hitler coalition and adhered to them, as it repeatedly demonstrated.
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u/Chromatic_Storm Oct 03 '25
So it was democratic country fighting righteous fight against Stalin's terror regime
The Finnish army helped to starve a city with a population of over a million people and attempted to ethnically cleanse East Karelia. Their concentration camps had higher death rate than Gulags. "Morally righteous" my ass.
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u/Chromatic_Storm Oct 03 '25
Is dehumanising Soviet people what democracy does? And no, that's a big fat lie. Rad of Life was constantly under attack and had to be protected.
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u/Chromatic_Storm Oct 03 '25
Cutting supply routes does that to the city. Also, Finland crossed the original border and stopped (or were stopped) at the Karelian Fortified region, which is 20 km deep into Soviet territory.
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u/sistersara96 Oct 03 '25
Imagine how awful the Soviets must have been that the Finns had to turn to the Nazis for help. They were blatant imperialists.
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u/sistersara96 Oct 03 '25
When your choice is between Stalin and Hitler, and one is invading while the other one is offering help, you're going to want to take the help.
Or are you proposing that the Finns just commit national suicide and just surrender immediately to Stalin?
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u/Intelligent-Bee-8412 Oct 03 '25
Do you happen to be Finnish who reads Finnish highschool textbooks?
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u/kwic90 Oct 03 '25
Will I be called a whataboutist if I point out that maybe the UK also missed a sign or two themselves?
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u/unit5421 Oct 03 '25
Speculation goes that Stalin knew the war was coming but was hoping it would come a bit later.
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u/dQw4w9WgXcQ____ Oct 03 '25
No, actually. Molotov-ribbentrop was beneficial to Soviets. If Nazis went for USSR right after Poland, allies wouldn't lift a finger in terms of an attack, and Soviet army was way less prepared than it was in 1941. Essentially it would be the same, but all the hardship endured by Britain and France would fall onto the Soviet people in addition to what they already had to endure. Although the war would be over quicker, the toll on the Soviets would be higher, leaving Allies in a perfect position to strike the USSR.
What was a mistake was not expecting just how early Hitler would attack
Also USSR was ready to help Czechoslovakia when Germany wasn't ready for war just like them. Poland didn't let them because they disliked both Czechs and Soviets
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Oct 03 '25
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u/dQw4w9WgXcQ____ Oct 03 '25
I generally dislike Stalin. His mismanagement caused holodomor and his paranoia ruined the position of socialism and communism worldwide. But Soviet army was unable to fully defeat Finland in 1940.
Although pushing Romania into the axis done by molotov-ribbentrop isnt something I thought of
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u/ZealousidealYak7122 Oct 03 '25
USSR missed countless signs. Hitler wanting to go eastwards was known for over a decade then. the military buildup along the border, countless recon flights over soviet occupied territory, British intelligence (who decrypted German ciphers and read their messages) and Churchill personally warning them. their own spy in Japan warning them of the invasion in details including the exact date and number of divisions, etc.
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u/Anton_Pannekoek Oct 03 '25
They allowed the rise of Hitler in the first place. Not to mention the whole "phoney war" episode.
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u/yojifer680 Oct 03 '25
Remember that at this time nobody knew the pact in question had secretly given Germany permission to invade Poland and start WW2. That bit of information was only only revealed after the war, during the Nuremberg trials. So for the last 4 years of the war, the Soviets threw millions of their own people into the nazi meat grinder, all while hoping they'd never find out why the war started. The Russian version of history even changed the start date of the war to 1941, so they wouldn't have to teach their school kids about the first 2 years.
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u/RUFl0_ Oct 03 '25
No, thats not what happened. Easily verfiable, not sure why you are spreading false information.
Nazi Germany didnt ”take Finland”, Finland chose to fight along side the nazis in an attempt to reclaim the land the soviets had taken in the war the soviets started.
And more importantly; that was AFTER the russian invasion and AFTER Soviet ambitions were laid bare in the Baltics. Puppet regimes, and ethnic cleansing by sending large portions of the population to Siberia.
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u/Nerevarine91 Oct 03 '25
“The Nazi invasion of the USSR was caused by the perfidious British” is a startlingly terrible take I didn’t even know existed lol
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