I don’t see how the fact that France and Britain refused an alliance with the USSR makes the one with Nazi Germany more acceptable.
And do you know why France and Britain refused? It’s in your text:
Stalin was ‘prepared to move more than a million Soviet troops to the German border’
Because between the Soviet and German borders there were countries! What Stalin asked was to conquer independent countries with the benediction of Paris and London. It was not a generous offer, it was an imperialist ultimatum. “Let me invade Poland, Romania and other allies of yours, and that will calm Hitler” was in substance Stalin’s proposition.
And to put true non-aggression pacts like the ones with France and Britain in the same group as an offensive alliance which was actually the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact is intellectually dishonest.
I don’t see how the fact that France and Britain refused an alliance with the USSR makes the one with Nazi Germany more acceptable.
And do you know why France and Britain refused? It’s in your text:
Because between the Soviet and German borders there were countries! What Stalin asked was to conquer independent countries with the benediction of Paris and London. It was not a generous offer, it was an imperialist ultimatum. “Let me invade Poland, Romania and other allies of yours, and that will calm Hitler” was in substance Stalin’s proposition.
And to put true non-aggression pacts like the ones with France and Britain in the same group as an offensive alliance which was actually the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact is intellectually dishonest.