Eps 1: Hitler vs. Putin, who would win?
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All of the people have compared Vladimir Putin to Hitler
Not only did Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) make similar comments ; comparing Putin to Hitler has been going on since the Russia-Georgia crisis of 2008.
Former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezisnki (in 2008) : Putin is "following a course that is horrifyingly similar to that taken by Stalin and Hitler in the 1930s."
Host
Daisy Shelton
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He argued that the Western powers and Poles appeased Hitler's aggression by allowing him to seize Czechoslovakia in 1938. Germany's ambassador to Poland, Rolf Nikel, intervened in the debate by tweeting that the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was preparing a criminal invasion of Nazi Germany in Poland. The Nazi invasion of Poland took place after the signing of a non-aggression pact on 23 August 1939, which stunned the world.
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki issued a statement accusing Putin of using the problems of World War II to cover up sanctions imposed on Russia for doping in sport. He had previously called Poland's ambassador to Berlin an "anti-Semitic pig" in the 1930s, and scorned Poland and the Western powers for appeasing Hitler.
After Germany invaded Czechoslovakia in March 1939, the Soviet Union concluded the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Hitler, who cut off ties with Czechoslovakia, promising to help it subdue Nazi control over Europe. The war has been described as one of the most brutal wars in the history of humanity, with millions of deaths and hundreds of thousands of victims.
Putin's defense of the Nazi-Soviet pact, while egregious to many, is not surprising to some.
The president claimed that Britain and France were to blame for Hitler's actions, but later revised his stance, saying there was nothing wrong with the Nazi-Soviet pact.
Putin pointed to an agreement previously signed with Germany to appease Hitler, and condemned a recent European Parliament resolution that attributed the outbreak of war to German actions during World War II, not to the Nazi-Soviet pact. Vladimir Putin has sparked a diplomatic row with Poland by saying Poland was responsible for World War II and that the Soviet occupation helped save lives. Putin pointedly pointed out at a joint news conference with Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev in Moscow on Tuesday that agreements had been signed between Germany and Russia to "appease" Hitler.
He is now trying to shift the blame for unleashing World War II from the Nazis to the Communists and now back to Hitler.
Majority opinion in Russia has never pointed out that Moscow needed the Allies to stop Adolf Hitler's advance, but most Russians still seem to hold that view. Two thirds of Russians say, according to a poll begun in 1991, that the Soviet Red Army has overwhelmed German troops. The idea that the Nazis were forced to retreat on the Eastern Front was taught in Russian schools during the communist period.
This is unusual for a leader who has achieved what many see as a triumph over a rotten Europe. The enormous losses of the Soviet Union, whose territory stood in the way of the Nazi advance to the east, and Ukraine are a topic of historical debate. It is too early to see whether the prevailing opinion about the war in Russia has shifted.
But in the worst years of the Cold War, there are reminders that cooperation is possible, especially in regions like the Middle East, North Africa, and the Balkans.
However, there is no need to throw all this baggage away now and treat Russia as the villain without any restrictions. First, it is an attempt to defend the "Russian narrative" of World War II; and, second, if that is Putin's foreign-policy goal, the attack is against him, not against Russia.
The Polish government claims that Russian President Vladimir Putin is manipulating the history of World War II in a way that whitewashes "Soviet crimes," accusing him of doing so as part of an "information war" against the West. This account of a victorious war against Nazism does not fit with the fact that Soviet Russia allied itself with Hitler's Germany in the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, which delimited the territory of both the USSR and Nazi Germany. Vladimir Putin's attack on Poland comes just days after a resolution by the European Parliament blamed the Soviet Union and its ally, the United States, for the start of World War II.
Russian officials have balked at any questioning of the USSR's role, and the fact that the Soviet Union lost an estimated 27 million people in the war is a pivotal part of Russia's national identity. But The National Interest, which published Putin's long-delayed article on World War II, concludes overall that it is a piece of heavy-handed propaganda. This article, entitled "Putin's War Crimes in World War II: Nazi Germany Against Soviet Russia," appeared on the same day as a rally in Moscow commemorating the end of World War II in Europe.