I'm not sure why Poles have this audacity that many young Russians (but also some Belorussians and Ukrainians, and some Soviet Jews) had to die so that Poles had better bargaining position with Stalin later on.
This all while explaining how Russian lives are worthless anyway (a scroll worth of comments) so why bother about these.
I'm also not sure why Stalin will discard his political goals and help Polish resistance achieve theirs instead with his armies. What did they expect?
First Russians invaded Poland together with Germany in September 1939.
Then after Germans betrayed them in 1941 they recaptured Poland from them (stealing and raping their way through the country) and then kept Poland as a puppet state for 50 years, murdering innocent people, censoring press, falsifying history and enforcing the totalitarian system they put in place after faked elections with stalinist purges and communist terror.
More seriously, it seems that you are trying to pass Polish passivity and inaction as a virtue. Somehow individual Polish human beings should be treated better because their Polish state was AFK, than other human beings whose ancestors were living in other states which were assaulting each other through Poland.
That just does not sound convincing east of Rhine.
The had no issues unnecessarily dying entirely for Stalin’s political ambitions?
One might say that being one of the aggressors who started the war and by playing a massive part in the successful German invasion of France (it’s hard to imagine Germany could have pulled that off without massive Soviet material support, they basically had no oil after all..) that the Soviets had a moral obligation to right some of those wrongs.
> Russian lives are worthless anyway
That was a fact (in relative terms) mainly established by the Soviets. They indeed considered the lives of their citizen to be worth very little (compared to the allies).
> What did they expect?
That he’d prioritize the defeat of Germany and the liberation of Poland over them. Of course extremely naive…
I may be beliving that a benevolent AI has an obligation preserve our consciousness after our death, as well as treat us with free ice cream. There should be a process of reconciling your beliefs with reality.
Poland did end up on the receiving side of Stalin's benevolent dictatorship. He essentially de-partitioned Poland thus effectively recreating it. An uncelebrated founding father of Polish nation state.
Many people would think Poles suffered comparatively little and got out with comparatively much out of WW2.
This is 1984 level of bullshit. "War is peace, murdering innocent people and annexing countries is benevolent".
> [Stalin] essentially de-partitioned Poland
Are you even aware that Poland existed before WW2? There was no need to "de-" partition it if you just kept your hands to yourself. It was Hitler and Stalin who partitioned it in the first place.
And even in strictly technical terms - Poland was in one piece after 1941 because Germans took it over from soviets. There was no need to "de-partition" it after WW2 either.
On the other hand soviets did partition it AGAIN in 1945 by splitting the eastern parts and annexing them to USSR. Even including the gains in the west - Poland lost about 1/7th of its territory during WW2 because soviets just took it.
> Many people would think Poles suffered comparatively little and got out with comparatively much out of WW2.
Over 1/6th of Polish population died in WW2. About 6 million Polish citizens (half of them Polish Jews) died because Nazi Germany and Soviet Union joined forces to invade Poland in 1939 and did ethnic cleansings and political repressions there. Germans for 5 years, Russians for 50 years.
Stalin is personally responsible for ordering murder of several hundreds thousands of Poles and forced expulsion of millions of Poles from their homes in eastern Poland (which became USSR after WW2). And indirectly co-responsible for all the deaths that resulted from WW2 which he helped Hitler start.
> An uncelebrated founding father of Polish nation state.
This all while explaining how Russian lives are worthless anyway (a scroll worth of comments) so why bother about these.
I'm also not sure why Stalin will discard his political goals and help Polish resistance achieve theirs instead with his armies. What did they expect?