this post was submitted on 01 Apr 2025
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A user just moved the goalpost to the time when the U.S.S.R. traded some raw materials in exchange for firearms and other machinery (which it later used to help defeat the Axis). One can imagine another counterarguing that this credit deal hardly enabled the Third Reich’s bellicism; that, if anything, it likely only lead to the Axis’s defeat as it allowed the Soviets to prepare for the armed conflict. Ask yourself if that sounds identical to the liberal bourgeoisie’s appeasement.
The Third Reich’s trade with the Kingdom of Romania between January and November 1940 surpassed its trade with the Soviet Union. I would be surprised if the Soviets did indeed deliver ‘about 75%’ of the Third Reich’s imports: only 34% of the Third Reich’s oil came from the Soviet Union; it looks like the Kingdom of Romania was a much more important source of Fascism’s black gold.
While not directly related to the pacts, the British Empire exported significant quantities of scrap to the Third Reich. In fact, the British Empire served as the Third Reich’s primary source of imported raw materials in the 1930s. I cannot say much about pre-1940 France’s economic relations with the Third Reich, but you sparked my curiosity on that subject.
Added to this, 75.3% of Europe’s Jewish refugees found refuge in the Soviet Union during World War II, Lithuanian Jews welcomed the Red Army in 1940, which had the highest number of Jews of all the Allied armies, and (my favourite) Soviet policies lead Transnistrians to resist antisemitism, even during Axis occupation.