Today (23/8/19) is the 80th anniversary of the signing of what became known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. This was a treaty between the USSR (Molotov as Foreign Minister) and Nazi Germany (Ribbentrop) which pledged that the two parties would not attack each offer - a non-aggression pact. Secret provisions in the pact were that the two would attack and share out Poland.
A week later Germany invaded Poland, two days later (3/9/39) Britain and France declared war on Germany and WW2 started. Two weeks after that the Soviets invaded east Poland and took possession of the land they'd been promised by Hitler.

Although the war started on 3/9, in reality the pact made war inevitable. Poland was isolated and indefensible (although that wasn't realised at the time by the western powers)and as such Hitler was always going to attack. And Britain/France had no real choice other than to stand-by their previous pacts to try to defend Poland.

The pact continued through to 22/6/41 when Operation Barbarossa started.

Volumes have been written concerning the morality and/or efficacy of pact, and it will continue to be argued over for a long time yet. Soviet apologists defend it as being a necessary evil. Others see it as an outrageous betrayal of civilised norms. Yet others see it as an inevitable coming together of two essentially compatible regimes.

One of the consequences of the pact was that it threw communists sympathisers in the west into a quandary. For the past years, at the direction of Moscow, they'd been denouncing the Nazis as a threat to the world. Now Hitler and Stalin were BFFs and they had to pivot. But they did it with few dissensions. Virtually overnight they went from denouncing Germany and urging efforts to confront Hitler, to denouncing Britain/France and praising Hitler.

This continued right up to June 1941 when Barbarossa started, whereupon they pivoted again and demanded that everything must be devoted to stopping Hitler

I forgot to attach this earlier by way of background.

http://www.lawliberty.org/liberty-forum/whiplash-communists-worldwide-scrambled-to-adjust-to-the-pact/

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler%27s_Address_to_the_Reichstag_(30_January_1939)
mhaze,
There was actually a banner with Der Marxismus muss sterben (Marxism must die)

m haze like the thread, and understood that
After leaving school, very young, learned to read and that saved me
Out the back of Grafton road building age put up, my first real reading frenzy was on the subject of ww2
Still fixated on it and it has helped me[reading] learn a great deal
May I ask? do you think America knew about Pearl Harbor
A suspicion exists they may have
Will not answer for a day or two, off to pick up 4x4 at Evans Head then hom

Belly,

Right off topic but give my regards to Evans Head, I did some boat building there in the late 1970s and had some good times with the local Aboriginal people at the Bora Ground back in the mangroves.

Dear mhaze,

Are you an historian?