DISINFO: Western democracies are primarily responsible for the Second World War
SUMMARY
The history of the Second World War has been rewritten to remove the blame on Western democracies who, on the contrary, are primarily responsible for the outbreak of the conflict. Stalin initially attempted to forge an alliance against Hitler with Western democracies, but the latter feared Bolshevism more than Nazism and preferred to make concessions to Hitler.
RESPONSE
Recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative that attempts to portray the Soviet Union's role in World War II as non-aggressive and portrays various European states as being responsible for the outbreak of the war. This message is part of the Kremlin’s policy of historical revisionism and an attempt to erode the disastrous historical role of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact by claiming that other European countries signed various international agreements with Germany after Adolf Hitler came into power. However, it is impossible to compare the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with various agreements signed between Germany and other European countries throughout the 1930s. There is no historical evidence that these agreements contained any secret protocols, which assumed common aggressive actions of Germany and these countries against third parties. The signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was a mutual decision of two totalitarian regimes (Nazi Germany and the Stalinist USSR) aimed at the division of Eastern and Central Europe between these two powers. It is a fact that the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact contained the Secret Supplementary Protocol, which assumed the division of Poland and other Eastern European countries between the USSR and Germany. For the Russian propaganda narratives about the Soviets and World War II read here. Read similar cases of the Russian historical revisionism about the Molotov – Ribbentrop pact: Signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact thwarted the UK’s expansionist plans in Europe, The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact did not violate the rights of the Polish state, The shift of all blame for WWII outbreak at the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact the best example of manipulation of history