DISINFO: UK pushed Hitler to invade Eastern Europe
DISINFORMATION CASE DETAILS
  • Outlet: arabic.sputniknews.com (archived)*
  • Date of publication: May 14, 2020
  • Outlet language(s): Arabic
  • Reported in: Issue 197
  • Countries / regions discussed: UK, Germany
Tags:
World War 2 WWII Adolf Hitler Nazi/Fascist

DISINFO: UK pushed Hitler to invade Eastern Europe

SUMMARY

Britain was the brains that urged (Nazi) Germany to move toward the East. The British were flirting with Adolf Hitler, the leader of Nazi Germany, from the day he came to power in 1933 until 1939.

RESPONSE

A recurring disinformation narrative distorting the events of the Second World War, and part of the Kremlin’s policy of historical revisionism.

This narrative points out to the 1938 Munich Agreement when British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain agreed to Hitler's annexation of the Sudetenland, portions of Czechoslovakia with ethnic-German majorities (Czechoslovakia itself was excluded from the negotiations). Chamberlain was aiming back then to avert another massive European war, but as it turned out, later on, it only delayed the conflict while making Hitler more powerful when the war finally came.

On September 1 1939, 53 German army divisions invaded Poland despite British and French threats to intervene on the nation’s behalf. Two days later, Chamberlain solemnly called for a British declaration of war against Germany, and World War II began. After eight months of ineffectual wartime leadership, Chamberlain was replaced as prime minister by Winston Churchill.

Read similar examples of the Russian historical revisionism: the UK allowed Hitler to revive a strong army, the US adopted Hitler's hatred towards Russia.

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Disclaimer

Cases in the EUvsDisinfo database focus on messages in the international information space that are identified as providing a partial, distorted, or false depiction of reality and spread key pro-Kremlin messages. This does not necessarily imply, however, that a given outlet is linked to the Kremlin or editorially pro-Kremlin, or that it has intentionally sought to disinform. EUvsDisinfo publications do not represent an official EU position, as the information and opinions expressed are based on media reporting and analysis of the East Stratcom Task Force.

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