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Kouros's avatar

One of the better pieces written by Mr. Tooze.

Some quibbles. USSR was not allied with Nazi Germany. They had a Non-Aggressions pact (Molotov-Ribbentrop), in which they agreed to not attack each other. It was not a pact of Friendship. An alliance is called by its name, look at the 2001 treaty between Russia and China: "The Treaty of Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation Between the People's Republic of China and the Russian Federation (FCT)". Compare that with "Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics."

So Mr. Tooze, curb your partisanship, it was not an alliance, it was a a means for Germany to stall for time and remove potential threats: i.e. an attack on Poland with Russia helping Poland would have ended the war sooner. Same as Ukraine signing the Minsk I and II agreements, stalling for time, as former president Piotr Poroshenko admitted in his interview to DW some months ago.

As for Keynes, he was part of the Professional Managerial Class (PMC), having failed to strike gold in his stock gambling, and become a rentier, and be an owner. So of course his sensibilities were directed to his sub-class and was intrinsically willing to support the ownership elites. Who nowadays what the rest of us to own nothing and be happy. What does Mr. Tooze wants?

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jbt1980's avatar

Franco was not a fascist? That is probably news to millions of Spaniards whose ancestors or family members died fighting the regime, or being persecuted by it. Hitler and Mussolini certainly saw Franco as one of their own, although Spanish version had some peculiarities, most notably heavy clerical / catholic church influence element. The fact that his regime was white-washed after WW2 as it was badly needed in the cold war, just like today various jihadists in Syria are white-washed as "freedom fighters" or neo-Nazis in Ukraine as "defenders of democracy" does not change anything on the nature of the beast.

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