DISINFO: Poland is largely responsible for WWII
SUMMARY
The pre-war period is much more complex and ambiguous than presented by Russia’s opponents. The responsibility of Poland and many other European countries for the outbreak of WWII is large. Russia puts this responsibility on the pre-war political elite of Poland. It was the first to sign the non-aggression pact with Hitler in 1934, it tried to impose its friendship with Germany at all cost, it took part in the partition of Czechoslovakia and it enjoyed territorial gains thanks to the Munich Agreement.
RESPONSE
This message is part of the Kremlin’s policy of historical revisionism and an attempt to erode the disastrous role of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact by the statements that the USSR was forced to sign this pact; that other European countries signed various international agreements with Adolf Hitler, the Munich Agreement triggered WWII and various historical conspiracies saying that Western democracies wanted to inspire a war between Nazism and Communism.
The Munich Agreement (September 30, 1938), indeed, permitted German annexation of the Sudetenland in Western Czechoslovakia. The policy of appeasement towards Adolf Hitler was heavily criticised in Europe and proved to be a disastrous move. World War II began in Europe one year later, on 1 September 1939, when Germany invaded Poland.
The signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was a mutual decision of two totalitarian regimes (Nazi Germany and the Stalinist USSR) aimed at the division of Eastern and Central Europe between these two powers. It is a proven historical fact that the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact contained the Secret Supplementary Protocol, which assumed the division of Poland and other Eastern European countries between the USSR and Germany. Thus, the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact enabled German and Soviet military aggression against Poland in September 1939, which resulted in the occupation of this country by Germany and USSR, triggering the beginning of WWII.
Read similar examples of the Russian historical revisionism concerning this issue - Signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact thwarted the UK’s expansionist plans in Europe, The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact did not violate the rights of the Polish state, the shift of all blame for WWII outbreak at the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact the best example of manipulation of history.